The 2026 AAJA Sacramento chapter board has members from all types of media. Board members serve a one-year term, with the exception of the national board representative, who serves a two-year term. Elections are held each fall. Contact the board at sacramento@aaja.org.
Sandy Louey, President
Media Relations and Special Events Branch Manager, California Energy Commission
Sandy Louey is the manager for the California Energy Commission’s Media and Public Communications Office. Her past communications positions include serving as director of strategic communications for the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, an editor with the California Lighting Technology Center and a media specialist for the U.S. Census Bureau. She was a newspaper reporter for 17 years, with stints at The Patriot-Ledger, The Hartford Courant, The Dallas Morning News, and The Sacramento Bee.
Sandy was selected as co-AAJA Chapter President of the Year in 2013. Active in AAJA since 1988, she is a former national and Bay Area scholarship winner. She has held a number of leadership positions within the organization, including co-president and secretary for the Sacramento chapter, vice-president of the Texas chapter and national board member for the New England and Texas chapters. The Sacramento chapter was named AAJA Chapter of the Year in 2006, 2010 and 2019. Sandy was named AAJA Member of the Year in 2002.
Maya Miller, National Board Representative
Politics Reporter, CalMatters
Maya C. Miller is a politics reporter for CalMatters, where she helps leads coverage of campaigns, voters, elections and the state legislature.
She has served on the AAJA Sacramento board since 2023 and currently is the chapter’s national board representative.
Maya returned to Sacramento in June 2025 after a year in Washington, D.C., where she covered Congress as the David E. Rosenbaum fellow for The New York Times. She hit the 2024 campaign trail and delivered deeply reported stories from five different states across the country.
Prior to the New York Times, Maya reported for The Sacramento Bee, where she covered state employees and economic mobility. She has also reported for The Seattle Times, the Minnesota Star Tribune and the Des Moines Register.
Maya graduated from Duke University with a degree in public policy. She grew up in Des Moines and credits the Iowa caucuses with sparking her love for journalism and current events.
Vannessa Maravilla, Treasurer
Communications and Media Specialist, WestEd
Vannessa Maravilla is the Communications and Media Specialist at WestEd, in their Division 2, Early Childhood Intervention, Mental Health, and Inclusion section. She focuses on the California Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC) Network project. She develops and implements communication strategies accessible for a variety of audiences on different platforms. She also leads the marketing, visibility, and distribution of IECMHC-related project materials and resources through a variety of mediums.
Prior to working at WestEd, Vannessa worked as an editor in the Production Development department at the California Chamber of Commerce, a digital producer for KCRA 3/My58 and web content analyst for Xerox State Healthcare, LLC.
She studied at the University of California, Davis, and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English in June 2005. She continued her studies at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, earning her Master of Arts degree in Magazine, Newspaper and Online Journalism in June 2008.
After graduating from Syracuse University, she did an internship at the Office of Public Information and Communication at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
Vannessa joined AAJA Sacramento as a student member in 2005 and was one of the chapter scholarship recipients in 2007.
Tillie Fong, Secretary
Field Representative, U.S. Census Bureau
Tillie Fong is a Sacramento native, whose most recent stint in her home town was as head of the edit committee for the Sacramento County Grand Jury in 2019-2020. She has also worked as a staff writer for The Elk Grove Tribune and as a part-time reporter for The Sacramento Bee. Previously, she had spent more than 20 years as a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado. She started her journalism career as an undercover reporter with The Sacramento Bee, where she also did a summer internship. She later worked as an intern reporter for the capital bureau of the Los Angeles Times. and completed the Summer Program for Minority Journalists at the University of California, Berkeley before moving to Colorado.
While at the Rocky Mountain News, she has covered a number of major news events , ranging from the Columbine High School shooting to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. After the paper folded in 2009, Tillie joined many of her former colleagues in starting INDenverTimes.com, an online newspaper in Colorado, and the RockyMountainIndependent.com, an online Denver news magazine.
Tillie graduated from Pitzer College with a bachelor’s degree in political studies and women’s studies and attended the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. While at Berkeley, she interned with the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco, and was awarded a Journalism in Asia Fellowship, which she used to interview women leaders in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
A long-time at-large member of AAJA, Tillie participated in the Executive Leadership Program in 2002. She was one of the founding members of the AAJA Denver chapter, and served as both secretary and national board representative for the Denver chapter from 2010-2011. She joined the Sacramento chapter in 2012, and has served on the board since 2013.
Bobby Caina Calvan, Board Member
Global News Manager, The Associated Press
Bobby Caina Calvan is a global news manager with The Associated Press. While he is currently based in New York City, his ties to the Sacramento area remain strong.
As a global news manager he helps monitor The AP’s news report from around the world, making sure what is produced meets the newsroom’s high standards. It also allows him to influence how and what news is covered.
Before taking on this role, his beat was New York City — covering such topics as the migrant crisis, homelessness, post-COVID New York, Mayor Eric Adams and high-profile court cases, including those involving former President Donald Trump.
Amritpal Kaur Sandhu-Longoria
Investigative Reporter, Freelance
Amritpal Kaur Sandhu-Longoria is an award-winning investigative reporter whose work focuses on keeping people at the center of the story. Her work has been published with Solving Sacramento, The Center for Public Integrity, USA TODAY and more. She has investigated malfunctioning Samsung refrigerators, grocery data collection and corporate responsibility of workers’ crimes. She was also part of a team of investigative reporters whose series on North Carolina’s youth psychiatric facilities resulted in a federal class action lawsuit against the state. She has reported on health, crime, wildfires, local government, faith and race for Record Searchlight in Redding, California, and has also completed fellowships with the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C., and Global Health Corps in Uganda. She is a nurse with experience in hospice, home health and at San Quentin State Prison. She grew up in Los Angeles and Punjab, and is fluent in Hindi and Punjabi.
Andri Tambunan, Board Member
Independent Visual Journalist
Andri Tambunan is an award-winning independent documentary visual journalist based in Sacramento. His work focuses on social justice, environmental conservation, and identity. Ultimately, his goal is to utilize the visual narrative to inform, engage, and impact social change. Andri regularly contributes to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to working with many reputable news publications, he also pursues personal projects and often collaborates with nonprofit organizations, local activists, and community coalitions. Andri’s work has received recognition from the Open Society Foundation, PhotoPhilanthropy, Pictures of the Year International, and his photographs were inducted to the permanent photography collection of The Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
Darla Weaver, Board Member
Executive Producer, ABC10
Darla Weaver is an executive producer at ABC10 in Sacramento, where she steers the ship for the station’s morning show and the entertainment-packed show “Take a Look.”
Darla is a Capital City native, but took a detour to the Windy City for college. She earned her degree at DePaul University in Chicago. She then made her way back home to get her start in broadcast news as a writer at another Sacramento station before quickly rising to the role of morning show producer.
Her next adventure took her to Phoenix, Arizona, where she became the senior producer of an evening news show. But, like any true Californian, Darla felt the call of home and made her way back to Sacramento.
Pamela Wu, Board Member
Director of News and Media Relations, UC Davis Health
Pamela Wu’s career spans the fields of broadcast journalism, public relations, and communications training.
Currently, she is Director of News and Media Relations for UC Davis Health, one of the nation’s leading academic health systems. In 2021 and 2023, she received Emmy Awards in the category of Health/Medical Long-Form Content.
Pamela joined UC Davis in 2009 following a career as a television news anchor and reporter. She has also been a frequent substitute host for Capital Public Radio, Sacramento’s NPR station, where she hosted a documentary that won an Edward R. Murrow Award.
Pamela is the founding co-director of AAJA’s Media Institute, a program in which top journalists and communicators train thought leaders to become valuable sources to the media. In 2015, she was named AAJA’s Member of the Year.
Pam also serves on the board of directors for the Sacramento Press Club.
Titus Wu, Board Member
Correspondent, Bloomberg Government
Titus Wu is a Sacramento-based correspondent for Bloomberg Government where he covers how the Golden State regulates Silicon Valley and emerging technologies such as AI. Prior to this role, he covered state government news for daily newspapers in Ohio and before that, in Kansas. Raised in Southern California, Titus owes his journalism start to AAJA through its high school summer program, JCamp, and his first-ever internship, funded by AAJA’s Los Angeles chapter.
Stephanie Olvido, Student Board Representative
Stephanie Olvido is a student at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has a background in education reporting, leadership and graphic design.
She was a member of the 2024 JCal cohort, where she worked with professional journalists and interviewed members of Congress. She was also a former education reporter for the Sacramento School Beat and Summer Fellow for the Institute for Youth in Policy, where she learned about the importance of education, policy, research and journalism.
Stephanie is an aspiring immigration lawyer and hopes to further explore the intersection of law, communications and politics. She plans to continue her work with AAJA Sacramento and attend law school.