Matthew Copeland is WyoFile’s chief executive and editor. Copeland brings nearly two decades of management, professional communications and community engagement experience to the role — more than half of it with Wyoming nonprofits. He is an award-winning writer who began his relationship with WyoFile as a freelance reporter. In 2016 he served as WyoFile’s interim editor and was instrumental in rapidly expanding both readership and reader engagement. A native of Charlottesville, Virginia, Matthew studied as a Howard Hughes Scholar of the Life Sciences and competed as a student athlete at Penn State, then served a six-year corporate sentence in the internet technology industry. Upon escape he found his way home to Wyoming where he met his wife, started a family and was thoroughly ruined for a life lived anywhere else. Copeland is an avid hunter, angler and wild-country junkie who believes that facts matter, that integrity is non-negotiable, and that nothing is as powerful as a good story well told. Contact: matthew@wyofile.com
Angus M. Thuermer Jr. reports about natural resources, criminal justice, federal lands, policy and other issues across the state, topics that have engaged him as a Wyoming journalist for the past 37 years. He lives in Jackson and joined WyoFile in the summer of 2014. He reported and photographed for many years for the Jackson Hole News. He was editor of that paper and of the Jackson Hole News&Guide. He served on the board of the Wyoming Press Association and is a past president of that organization. He is co-owner and photographer of the Jackson Hole Ski Atlas, has volunteered as an obituary editor for the American Alpine Journal, and works with the League of Women Voters to host election forums in Teton County. He settled in Jackson in 1978 after a stint as an alpinist, rock climber and Wyoming oilfield roughneck. He graduated from Yale with a BA in English in 1974 after growing up in the Washington, D.C. area and overseas as a Foreign Service brat. He enjoys fly-fishing, photography, skiing, mountaineering, boating, hunting and wilderness travel where the outcome is uncertain. Contact: angus@wyofile.com
Guy V. Padgett serves as WyoFile’s operations director. Padgett has long been involved in public life in Wyoming. During his time in Casper, Padgett served on numerous non-profit boards, volunteered as an election judge, and served on the Casper city council, including a term as mayor. He has worked as an Assistant Curator of Education at the Nicolaysen Art Museum in Casper, as well as the Executive Director of the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra. Padgett is a graduate of the University of Wyoming, and completed a Master’s degree in International Studies from the University of Denver in June of 2011. He currently lives in Denver, Colorado, with his husband and their cat. Contact: guy@wyofile.com
Katie Klingsporn is WyoFile’s managing editor. Klingsporn grew up in Lander, where she learned to love the smell of sage and Wyoming’s massive skies. She graduated from the University of Montana’s School of Journalism, and spent the next dozen years working in newspapers in the West, including a 9-year stint at The Daily Planet in Telluride, Colorado. Her freelance work has appeared in National Geographic Adventure, The Colorado Sun, Adventure Journal, 5280 magazine and The Cleanest Line. She enjoys destroying and rebuilding sentences, mushroom hunting and roaming the high desert with her husband, daughter and their dog, Josey. Contact: katie@wyofile.com
Daniel Kenah is WyoFile’s development director. A graduate of Boston College, he was first drawn to Wyoming to work as a ranch hand near Saratoga, and quickly fell in love with mountains, sage and rolling storms. He spent several years in Jackson skiing, rafting and working in customer service, and four years in Lander where he managed grants and major giving for the National Outdoor Leadership School. He currently lives in Sheridan with his partner, where he plays the piano, gardens and cooks. Contact: daniel@wyofile.com
Sophie Komornicki is WyoFile’s membership manager. She is a Chicagoland transplant with a background in public relations and marketing. Prior to joining the WyoFile team, she worked in the areas of outdoor education, venture capital and sustainability-focused brands. She earned a bachelor’s in business administration at Babson College. Depending on the season, you can find her hiking with her dog, skiing or experimenting with new recipes. Contact: sophie@wyofile.com
Dustin Bleizeffer is a Report for America Corps member covering energy and climate at WyoFile. He has worked as a coal miner, an oilfield mechanic and for 22 years as a statewide reporter and editor primarily covering the energy industry in Wyoming. He served as MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative Journalism Fellow, John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford, communications director for Wyoming Outdoor Council and WyoFile editor-in-chief. He lives in Casper. You can reach him at (307) 267-3327, dustin@wyofile.com and follow him on Twitter @DBleizeffer.
Mike Koshmrl joined WyoFile in 2021 after a decade-long tenure as the Jackson Hole News&Guide’s environmental reporter. A Minnesota native, Koshmrl enlisted in the AmeriCorps helping to teach gradeschoolers in North Minneapolis and then headed west to earn a master’s in journalism at the University of Colorado. He ran through newsrooms around the West as an intern, reporting from places like Summit County, Colorado and Fairbanks, Alaska. Koshmrl fancies himself as an outdoorsman, and enjoys hunting, fishing, floating, skiing, scrambling, hiking and propelling himself into as many new places as he can manage. Contact: mike@wyofile.com.
Maggie Mullen cut her reporting teeth at Wyoming Public Radio, and spent over five years there as an audio reporter and host. During that time, she became a founding reporter for the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between public radio newsrooms across the region. Her work has appeared on NPR, Science Friday, Marketplace, National Native News and PBS NewsHour. Mullen was born and raised in Casper, and lives in Sheridan with her partner. She is most content in the company of their mutt, Moonee, either out for a walk on the prairie, or swimming in Wyoming’s frigid rivers and lakes. Contact: maggie@wyofile.com or @maggiemlln on Twitter.
Tennessee Watson is WyoFile’s state desk editor. Before landing in Wyoming, Watson stuck mainly to the east coast, with stints in Cuba and Mexico thrown in there too. She embarked on her own journalism career over a decade ago but both of her parents were journalists so it’s been a part of her life since birth. She’s worked at Wyoming Public Radio, and freelanced for NPR, Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, LatinoUSA and The Heart. She won a national Edward R. Murrow Award, was a Peabody Award finalist, and was a 2020 Nieman Fellow at Harvard. She loves running with her dogs Murray and Freddy, dance parties, pineapple on pizza and sailing. Contact: tennessee@wyofile.com
Madelyn Beck was born and raised on a ranch in Montana. She went to the University of Montana, before striking out to work with publications across the country, ranging from Alaska to Washington, D.C. Most recently, she worked as a regional reporter with the Mountain West News Bureau, covering topics like public lands, federal circuit court decisions and fentanyl overdoses. Her stories have been published on Marketplace, NPR, Here & Now and various newspapers and radio stations across the Midwest and Mountain West. She has a fluffy rescue cat named Jack who likes playing in the snow and chasing after water from the hose. Contact: madelyn@wyofile.com or @madelynbeck8 on Twitter.