The region’s sometimes quirky lineup of media players welcomes a new entrant this month.

Mission and State, a nonprofit spawned by grants from the Santa Barbara Foundation and the Knight Foundation among others, rolled out the red carpet for its new staff on Feb. 19. The project was previously called the Santa Barbara Investigative Journalism Initiative.

Among the new staffers is Yvette Cabrera, a former columnist and investigative reporter for the Orange County Register. The award-winning expert on Latino issues grew up in Santa Barbara.  Sam Slovick is also on the staff. Slovick previously wrote a series on Los Angeles’ skid row for the LA Weekly and has taken home honors for a Western Publishing magazine award and was nominated for a Pulitzer. Phuong-Cac Nguyen, a journalist, author, filmmaker and brand strategist, joins Mission and State after spending 10 years in Brazil working for  branding agency box1824.com. Nguyen  will be the Santa Barbara startup’s managing editor.

The Mission and State team will work out of the offices of the McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy.

We offer our welcome to Executive Editor Joe Donnelly, Cabrera and the rest of the team, including part-time Business Times reporter Alex Kacik, who will be joining the effort March 1.