About me
I’m a journalist from Chicago. My work often examines the intersections between community self-determination, public health and safety, and the state.
Since 2023, I have been the investigations editor at South Side Weekly. Previously, I’ve edited news and investigations at The TRiiBE and the Chicago Reader. My work has also appeared in The Appeal, Block Club Chicago, Illinois Answers Project, In These Times, Scientific American, Slate, Smithsonian Magazine, The Trace, WIRED and elsewhere.
I studied ecology and evolution in college. After a few years in various life sciences labs, I began my journalism career writing for research and popular science publications. I started reporting on Chicago news and politics a year before the 2020 George Floyd protests rocked the city. They led me to my first major investigative story: an exposé of how the Chicago police used the city’s gun-violence prevention center to monitor activists. I have been writing and managing investigations ever since.
I found, perhaps unexpectedly, that scientific inquiry and investigative reporting use many of the same tools to make sense of the world. Both test hypotheses, gather evidence and analyze data, and both require curiosity, rigorous empiricism, patience, and the drive to keep trying new angles when answers are difficult to find. And both try to arm people with the truth so that they can improve their world.
I’ve also worked in bookstores, bars, kitchens, restaurants, retail shops, painting crews, and (briefly) a planetarium.
Awards
2025 Sarah Brown Boyden Award winner, innovative storytelling, with Binghui Huang, Meredith Newman, Madison Hopkins, Alex Nitkin, Claire Murphy, Laura Stewart and Cesar Calderon: Making it in Chicago (Illinois Answers Project and South Side Weekly)
2024 Sarah Brown Boyden Award winner, technology reporting, with Max Blaisdell: Missed Shots (South Side Weekly)
2024 Online Journalism Awards finalist, technology reporting, with Max Blaisdell: Missed Shots (South Side Weekly)
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