Born and raised in Denver, Leah Millis picked up her first SLR camera at the age of 12 and has had one in her hands ever since. Since 2009, Millis has had four different internships across the county and has enjoyed freelancing for national clients. In the spring and summer of 2012 she relished getting blown around Wyoming at a staff position at the Casper Star-Tribune after moving back West from where she was living in sunny Saint Petersburg, FL.
It was a trip Millis took to Haiti in high school that inspired her to pursue photojournalism. She has visited the country three times total, one of the trips lasting about two months in 2010 when the cholera outbreak started. Millis did not get cholera but she did have the educational experience of catching Dengue Fever. Despite this, Millis dreams of owning land in Haiti someday, the country that will always have her heart.
Millis joined the San Francisco Chronicle in 2013 as a staff photographer. She has already enjoyed following around the world's youngest female monster truck driver, sweating through Hardly Strictly coverage and gaining access in a notorious local sex club. In the past year and a half, Millis has become particularly passionate about covering the worst drought in California’s modern history.