Honors
- Best Special Section, Second Place, Society for Features Journalism, 2023
- National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE), Best Multi-Platform Package or Series – Real Estate, 2023
- Award of Excellence: Story Page Design, Society for News Design, 2020
- Edward R. Murrow Award Investigative Reporting, Large Market Radio, 2020
- Regional Murrow Award Investigative Reporting, 2020
- Driehaus Award for Investigative Reporting (1st in 2018), (3rd in 2019)
- Excellence in Financial Journalism Awards (Local and Public Service Reporting), New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants 2018
- Best Data Journalism, Peter Lisagor Awards, 2018
- National Headliner Award, News series in daily newspapers with daily circulation over 100,000, 2018
- Gerald Loeb Award(Local), UCLA Anderson School of Management, 2018
- Knight Chair Award, Illinois Press Association, 2018
- Pulitzer Prize Finalist (Local), The Pulitzer Prize, 2018
- Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism, Nieman Foundation 2017
- Deutscher Reporter Preis for Innovation, 2016
- Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow, 2016
- First Place: Data Journalism, Education Writers Association Awards, 2015
- Fellow, “Covering the U.S. Visa System in Your Own Backyard” Robert R. McCormick Foundation/ The Poynter Institute, 2015
- Outstanding Overall Senior of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, 2013
- 1st Place: SPJ Region 4 Mark of Excellence Award -TV General Reporting, 2013
- One of 20 students selected for the Online News Association Student Newsroom 2013 where I wrote about Storify, social media and earning my black belt
- One of 12 student reporters for Excellence in Journalism (EIJ) News 2013 (Society of Professional Journalists, Radio Television Digital News Association)
- Recipient of Scripps Howard Foundation Multimedia Grant, Jesse and Ruth Zousmer Scholarship, Norman H. Dohn Scholarship-Central Ohio SPJ chapter scholarship and the Ford Scholarship in Journalism
Speaker/Trainer
- Spring National College Media Convention (New York, New York), March 2017: “Making it there”
- NICAR (Jacksonville, Florida), March 2017: “Structuring your data the right way the first time” —> presentation and Panel: “Collaborating with the Competition”
- Workshop (Berlin, Germany), January 2017: “Finding Stories Using Data” —> presentation
- DDJ Essen Meetup (Essen, Germany), November 2016: Lightning Talk: presentation
- Mozilla Festival (London, UK), October 2016: Lightning Talk: presentation and Workshop: presentation
- Uncovering Asia (Kathmandu, Nepal), September 2016: Workshop: “Using Open Refine to Clean Data“
- “Three Things You Should Keep in Mind While Collecting Your Own Data” –> presentation
- Hacks/Hackers BA Media Party (Buenos Aires, Argentina), August 2016: Keynote: presentation and Workshop: presentation
- SRCCON (Portland, Oregon), July 2016: “The good and bad of newsroom on-boarding processes (and how can we make them better)“
- News Impact Summit (Berlin, Germany), July 2016: presentation
- Workshop (Berlin, Germany), June 2016: presentation
- Investigative Reporters and Editors Conference (New Orleans, Louisiana), June 2016: repo
- DataHarvest (Mechelen, Belgium), June 2016: repo
- Hacks/Hackers (Berlin, Germany), May 2016: “Investigating College Sports“
- IV Jornadas de Periodismo de Datos (Madrid, Spain), May 2016: repo
- International Journalism Festival (Perugia, Italy), April 2016: “The Grammar of Graphics: Designing and Transforming Data“ workshop –> workshop repo
- NICAR (Atlanta, Georgia), March 2015: “Key data for investigating universities”
- Northern Kentucky University Digital Transformations in News (Highland Heights, Kentucky), March 2014: “How to tell stories with data and visuals”
- SPJ Region 4 Conference (Dayton, Ohio), April 2013: “On the Hunt: Internships”
Other teaching workshops
- Adjunct professor at University of Southern California: JOUR 322 Introduction to Data and Investigative Journalism
- Guest taught/ lectured at: University of Southern California Center for Health Journalism Program, FOIA Fest Chicago, Indiana University Access Workshop, Duke University, American University, U.S. China Education Trust, DePaul University
- Correctiv lunch time talks: using data for investigations, Excel 1 & 2, newsroom on-boarding and off-boarding
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: taught copy editors how to use SQL, held data trainings for reporters
- E.W. Scripps School of Journalism: workshops on data (SQL, data cleaning)
Other
- Participant of the Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program at CUNY and Covering the U.S. Visa System in Your Own Backyard
- Graduate of Second City Improv School
- Black Belt Tae Kwon Do
Affiliations
- Proud member of IRE and SAJA
- AAJA LA Board member
- AAJA JCamp 2008 alum