T-Squared: Data visuals team adds two new developers

The Texas Tribune’s data visuals team will welcome two new developers in July — Carla Astudillo and Mandi Cai. They will both work on the award-winning team of developer-journalists that uses data to find and tell stories about Texas.

Carla comes to the Tribune from NJ.com and The Star-Ledger, where she reported with data and made graphics. She was the lead developer on her newsroom's ambitious Force Report project, which won Investigative Reporters and Editors’ prestigious FOI Award this year. Her other work includes local election results, a super-useful power outage tracker and an analysis of gender and racial representation in the New Jersey Legislature.

Previously, Carla was the deputy data visuals editor at the International Business Times. She's an alumna of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Florida.

At the Tribune, Carla will handle all of our political data, including campaign finance and election results.

Mandi is joining the Tribune after working as an interaction designer at BioBright, a Boston-based start-up, where she has made tools to help scientists visualize the data behind their experiments. She studied fine arts, engineering and neuroscience at Brown University. Along the way, she told data stories with virtual reality, blogging, illustration, charts and maps. On the side, she has contextualized complex defense data and assisted The Pudding with story data.

At the Tribune, Mandi will analyze data, make graphics and take ownership of our open-source graphics development environment.

We're thrilled they are heading to Texas, and can’t wait for them to join us July 8. In the meantime, you can follow them on Twitter — here’s Carla, and Mandi.