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Executive Director
Bill Buzenberg became Executive Director of the Center for Public Integrity in January 2007. The Center is an investigative news organization based in Washington, D.C. with a 20-year track record and some 40 first place national journalism awards. Buzenberg was Vice President of News for National Public Radio, as well as an NPR foreign affairs correspondent and London bureau chief from 1978-1997. He was responsible for launching “Talk of the Nation”, as well as the expansion of “All Things Considered” and the extension of NPR’s newscasts services to 24 hours a day. During his tenure, the NPR News Division was honored with 9 DuPont-Columbia University batons and 10 Peabody Awards. He was also Senior Vice President of News at American Public Media / Minnesota Public Radio from 1998-2006 where he won his second DuPont-Columbia gold baton. Buzenberg launched American RadioWorks, public radio’s major documentary and investigative journalism unit, and “Speaking of Faith,” public radio’s signature program on religion. He also began Public Insight Journalism, an innovative use of technology to draw knowledge from the audience. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Buzenberg has been recognized for his work numerous times, including the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award, public radio’s highest honor. He was co-editor of the memoirs of the late CBS News President Richard Salant (Salant, CBS, and the Battle for the Soul of Broadcast Journalism). A graduate of Kansas State University, Buzenberg has also been awarded fellowships for his studies at the University of Michigan, the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Buzenberg has appeared on many national media outlets including: C-SPAN, ABC World News, CNN, NPR, and XM Radio. His commentary has also been featured in The New York Times, Associated Press, Democracy Now!, The Washington Post, St. Louis-Dispatch, Miami Herald, Boston Globe, Politico, National Journal, The Hill, TheStreet.com, and U.S. News & World Report among others.
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James R. Soles Fellow
Laurel Adams graduated cum laude from the University of Delaware in May of 2010 with majors in international relations, Spanish, and Latin American studies. She interned at Voices Without Borders in Wilmington, Del., and the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. While at the University of Delaware, Adams studied abroad in Argentina, helped start a Spanish conversation club, and served as an editor for the Sigma Iota Rho Journal of International Relations.
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Communications Director
Randy Barrett is in charge of the center’s public outreach and media relations. He comes most recently from National Journal, where he was a managing editor overseeing the magazine’s lobbying and law coverage. Barrett has two decades of experience as a journalist and spent much of his early career at Ziff Davis Media. He is a graduate of Brown University and a member of the Rhode Island chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
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American University Fellow
Amy Biegelsen won the Virginia Press Association’s 2009 Best in Show Award for a portfolio on health and environmental stories. She is the recipient of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association’s Excellence in Journalism prize for a story on children’s mental health issues and is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago.
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American University Fellow
Jeremy Borden is a fellow from American University, where he is pursuing a master’s degree in journalism and public affairs. He spent two years at The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, Va., where he received a Virginia Press Association award for in-depth/investigative reporting. He most recently wrote for the United Service Organizations’ (USO) On Patrol magazine. His work has appeared in The Charlotte Observer, The Roanoke Times, and in Knight-Ridder (now McClatchy) newspapers when he reported for Knight-Ridder’s Washington bureau during the summer of 2005. He is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
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Media Relations Manager
Steve Carpinelli assists the Center’s communications department with media strategy, procedures, and public outreach efforts. Before joining the Center in 2006, he worked in the research and intelligence practice group at Public Strategies, Inc.‘s Washington, D.C., office, focusing on client issues in the telecommunications, finance, manufacturing, health care, and technology sectors. Carpinelli has more than 10 years of experience in Washington public affairs, media relations, and crisis communications issues with policy makers, corporate executives, and all forms of the media. He graduated with honors from American University’s School of International Service with a master’s degree in international communication and policy.
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Associate Development Director
Before coming to the Center, Francesca Craig worked in the office of development at The Aspen Institute, a large public policy organization based in Washington and in Aspen, Colo. Prior to her work at The Aspen Institute, Craig worked at The Cordell Hull Institute, a pro-free-trade think tank, as board coordinator. Craig is a graduate of New York University and attended law school at London University School of Law in Hong Kong.
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Data Editor
David Donald leads the computer-assisted reporting program at the Center. His current interest is in financial, economic, and housing analysis and new tools for data analysis. Prior to joining the Center in 2008, he served as training director at Investigative Reporters and Editors and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting for five years. He conducted more than 150 training events for thousands of journalists in the United States and internationally with a focus on investigative skills and data analysis to uncover fraud and other governmental abuse. Donald also spent 11 years at the Savannah Morning News in Georgia where he was research and projects editor. Among his many stories, he investigated the resegregation of public schools, race relations, and issues surrounding aging population. His work was part of a series of stories winning two James K. Batten Awards and two Hammet Awards for ethical and courageous journalism. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from Kent State University and earned a media management fellowship at the Poynter Institute in 1991.
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Staff Writer
Before he joined the Center’s staff in 2008, Joe Eaton was a staff writer at Washington City Paper and a reporter at The Roanoke Times. He has written for Salon.com, USA Today, and The (Baltimore) Sun. Eaton graduated from the University of Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in English and earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland.
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Managing Editor, Regulatory Affairs, Energy, Environment
Epstein has more than two decades of Washington-based investigative reporting experience and spent much of his career at Business Week and The Plain Dealer. He has covered topics from politics and drug companies to cyber-espionage and the insurance industry. Epstein’s stories on lending practices that ensnare poor and unsophisticated borrowers led to changes in the practices of global microfinance. Laurels he has won or shared include the Barlett & Steele Award for Investigative Business Journalism; the SPJ investigative reporting award; the White House Correspondents Association award; and an Overseas Press Club of America citation. Earlier in his career, Epstein worked for The Miami Herald, Tampa Tribune, Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Watertown Daily Times.
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Senior Reporter
Farrell is a prize-winning journalist and author. He spent his early career, and won a George Polk award, at The Denver Post. At The Boston Globe, he covered the first Iraq war, several presidential campaigns and served as the Globe’s White House correspondent and Washington editor, among other assignments. Farrell returned to The Denver Post in 2003 for four years as national columnist and Washington bureau chief for the newspaper and the MediaNews chain. During that time he helped lead the paper’s political coverage, and made another reporting trip to war-torn Iraq. In 2007, he left to write Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned, a biography of the great American defense attorney. It will be published by Doubleday in June. In 2001, Farrell authored Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century, a biography of the late Speaker of the House, which won the Hardeman prize for the best book on Congress. Farrell is a graduate of the University of Virginia.
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Human Resources Manager
Najia Gainous joined the Center as the Human Resource Manager in January 2010. She has a rich background in human resources both in the national and international sectors. She has worked for several organizations in the Washington, D.C., area including Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, Creative Associates International, and Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA). Before coming to the Washington, D.C., area, Gainous worked as a member of the Budget and Finance staff for both the U.S. Peace Corps and the American Embassy in Rabat, Morocco.
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Staff Writer
Caitlin Ginley joined the Center in July 2007 as the University of Delaware’s 10th James R. Soles Fellow. She graduated cum laude in May 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in English and political science, concentrating in journalism. She worked for two years on the editorial staff of the university’s award-winning student newspaper, The Review, and was an intern for Delaware Today magazine and Court TV.
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Deputy Web Editor: Social Media
Cole Goins joined the Center in March 2009 as deputy web editor. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in journalism and mass communications, and has since pursued interests in the intersection of journalism and new media. A former music director at WXYC 89.3FM in Chapel Hill, Goins has also been an active freelance writer, with work published in the Washington City Paper and Dusted magazine.
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Web Editor
Andrew Green joined the Center in July 2008 as web editor. Green graduated from Northwestern University in 2004 with a degree in journalism and a double major in political science. Following graduation he spent a year in Zambia on a Fulbright Grant, studying the development of the country’s independent media. Most recently he served as a fellow at The American Prospect. He has written for In These Times, Global Journalist, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, among other publications.
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Senior Reporter
Greene joined the Center after serving as investigations and government editor for The Miami Herald. He also spent nine years at the paper exposing slave-like conditions in Florida’s farm fields, investigating deadly air cargo plane crashes and uncovering corruption at Miami’s airport. Greene is author of Night Fire: Big Oil, Poison Air, And Margie Richard’s Fight To Save Her Town, and his work has been honored by the Gerald Loeb Awards, National Press Club, Investigative Reporters and Editors and National Headliner Awards. Greene was part of four Herald reporting teams awarded the Pulitzer Prize (twice) or named Pulitzer Prize finalists (twice). Earlier in his career, he was a staff writer for The Baltimore Sun and Palm Beach Post.
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Staff Writer
Benjamin Hallman covers business and finance for the Center. He joined in June 2010 after nearly five years as a legal affairs reporter at The American Lawyer, where he covered the business of law, white collar crime, and regulatory Washington. Hallman has reported on the accounting fraud prosecutions of HealthSouth’s Richard Scrushy and Qwest’s Joesph Nacchio; on the massive Google book search settlement; and, from Iraq, on American-led efforts to rebuild the Iraqi justice system. His story about the crash of Lehman Brothers was anthologized in The Best American Legal Writing (2009). He also previously worked as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Hallman received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 2004. Follow him on Twitter @Ben_Hallman.
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Staff Writer
Chris Hamby has a master’s degree in journalism with a concentration in investigative reporting from the University of Missouri, and he has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Richmond. In 2010 he completed a yearlong re-examination of a disputed murder case, supported in part by an investigative reporting fellowship. He has written about subjects such as politics and policy, the criminal justice system, and the environment for various print and online publications.
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Senior Reporter
Heath comes from The Seattle Times, where he was three times a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He co-authored an investigation of conflicts of interest surrounding clinical cancer research at a Seattle hospital. The series won the Harvard University’s Goldsmith prize for investigative reporting, the George Polk award for medical reporting, the Gerald Loeb award, the Scripps Howard Foundation’s public service award, the Associated Press Managing Editors’ public service award and the Newspaper Guild’s Heywood Broun award. Heath’s recent expose on congressional earmarks was recognized by the National Press Foundation with the Everett Dirksen award for best coverage of Congress. He is a graduate of Grinnell College and was a 2006 Harvard Nieman Fellow.
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Deputy Chief Development Officer
Robin Heller has served as a non-profit executive and development officer for a range of academic and human service organizations, including Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Center for Bioethics at University of Pennsylvania, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and Children’s Defense Fund. She received her bachelor’s in comparative literature at Northwestern University and her master’s in social work from Columbia University. Heller is a board member of Street Sense, a news source that reports on poverty, social justice, and homelessness in Washington, D.C.
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Staff Writer
Michael Hudson covers business and finance for the Center. He previously worked as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and as an investigator for the Center for Responsible Lending. Hudson has also written for Forbes, The Big Money, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and Mother Jones. His work has won many honors, including a George Polk Award for magazine reporting, a John Hancock Award for business journalism and accolades from the National Press Club, the White House Correspondents’ Association and the American Bar Association. He edited the award-winning book Merchants of Misery and appeared in the documentary film Maxed Out. His new book, THE MONSTER: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America—and Spawned a Global Crisis, will be published in October by Times Books.
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Project Coordinator
Josh Israel joined the Center in 2006. Previously, he spent four years working as director of research on Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist/historian Nick Kotz’s acclaimed book Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws that Changed America, and six months as an aide to a Virginia state legislator. Israel is a 1999 magna cum laude graduate of Brandeis University and was a 2004 Political Leadership Program Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership.
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Associate Director of Foundations
Caroline Jarboe came to the Center in 2007 after eight years at National Public Radio, where she most recently served as senior development associate, and a year as development manager for the Self Reliance Foundation/Hispanic Communications Network. At NPR, Jarboe worked with the nation’s major private foundations, and she was a central development staff member in charge of writing about NPR’s news coverage plans. She graduated from Tulane University with a bachelor’s degree in American studies and received a master’s degree from the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program. Under her maiden name Caroline Langston, Jarboe is a widely published writer and essayist, a winner of the Puschart Prize, and a commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered.
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Managing Editor, Politics and Government
Johnson spent most of her 30-year-career at The Associated Press, where she oversaw the wire service’s coverage of the federal government, elections and politics as Washington bureau chief from 1998 to 2008. Under her stewardship, the 120-person Washington bureau won numerous journalism awards for its investigative and political coverage, and stood apart on election night 2000 when Johnson refused to call the winner of the presidential race while the outstanding votes were in question and could tip the presidency either way. As a result, AP was the lone major news outlet in the exit-poll consortium that did not have to reverse its election call. Johnson was subsequently recognized as a Pulitzer finalist for her courage in resisting the pressure to follow the media pack. In 2009-10, she designed and implemented state news content for 28 million readers of the AARP Bulletin.
Bill Kovach
Acting Director, ICIJ
Kovach has been a journalist and writer for 40 years. He began his career at the Johnson City Press Chronicle in Tennessee and, from 1960 to 1967, was a reporter for the Nashville Tennessean, covering the civil-rights movement, southern politics, and Appalachian poverty. After a year of study on a journalism fellowship at Stanford University he joined The New York Times, where he worked as a reporter and later as the chief of its Washington bureau. Kovach left the Times in 1986 and became the editor of The Atlanta Journal Constitution for two years. Kovach is the founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, and serves as a consultant to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
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Staff Writer
Leonard is a multimedia reporter who has worked for Vogue magazine, Stateline.org and the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. She’s also done stints at In Style and Time magazine and at Teach for America. Leonard is a graduate of the University of Richmond.
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Deputy Web Editor: Multimedia
Erik Lincoln, originally from western Colorado, joined the Center in July 2009. He graduated from Mesa State College in 2007 with a degree in mass communications and a minor in political science. He worked for two years as the front-page designer and a copy editor at The (Grand Junction, Colorado) Daily Sentinel. He was an intern at USAToday.com and has written for The Associated Press.
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Staff Writer
Kristen Lombardi is an award-winning journalist who has worked for the Center for Public Integrity since 2007. She has been a journalist for more than 15 years. Her investigation into campus rape cases for the Center won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service in 2010, among other recognitions. More recently, Lombardi was a staff writer and investigative reporter at the Village Voice, where she provided groundbreaking coverage of the 9/11 health crisis. Her investigative reports as a staff writer for the Boston Phoenix were widely credited with helping to expose the clergy sexual-abuse scandal in that city. Her work for the Center has been honored by the Investigative Reporters and Editors, the National Press Foundation, the Association of Health Care Journalists, the John B. Oakes Environmental Prize, and the Society of Environmental Journalists. She was awarded a fellowship from the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma for her coverage of child sexual abuse, and is active in the Dart Society. Lombardi graduated with high honors from the University of California at Berkeley, and has a master’s degree in journalism from Boston University.
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Computer-Assisted Reporter
Elizabeth Lucas joined the Center in June 2010 as a computer-assisted reporting intern. She previously graduated from Calvin College with a bachelor’s degree in English and from the University of Missouri with a master’s degree in journalism. During grad school she worked at the database library run by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR), an arm of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), and as an assistant city editor for the Columbia Missourian.
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Chief Operating Officer
Ellen McPeake returned to the Center in November 2007 as its chief operating officer. She has spent most of her life in the nonprofit sector, working for such groups as the Center for Law and Social Policy, the Mental Health Law Project, Public Citizen, and most recently Greenpeace, as its chief operating officer. McPeake majored in international management at Georgetown University.
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Staff Writer
Aaron Mehta graduated with honors from Tufts University in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in history and communications. Hailing from the Boston area, he has worked for a national political convention, for the legal watchdog group CREW in Washington, and on several Massachusetts-based campaigns. Most recently, he filled the role of research and policy director for a city council race in Boston.
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Senior Reporter
Jim Morris has been a journalist since 1978, specializing in coverage of the environment and public health. He has won more than 50 awards for his work, including the George Polk award, the Sidney Hillman award, the Sigma Delta Chi award, and five Texas Headliners awards. He directed a global investigation of the asbestos industry that won the first-place John B. Oakes award for environmental reporting from Columbia University in 2011. He has worked for newspapers in Texas and California as well as publications such as U.S. News & World Report and Congressional Quarterly in Washington. This is his second stint at the Center.
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Development Associate
Eva Nanavati is a 2007 honors graduate of Lenoir-Rhyne College, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in political science and sociology. She is currently working towards her master’s degree in public policy from George Mason University. Prior to joining the Center, Nanavati worked at the League of Women Voters of the United States as the assistant to both the executive director and the development department. During her undergraduate years, Nanavati interned at the American Association of University Women, the Office of the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, as well as volunteering on a campaign in Anchorage, Alaska.
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Project Director
Nadi Penjarla is the Project Director of Ujima, a computer assisted reporting (CAR) project to create web portals and data hubs for international journalists especially in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Nadi was the founding editor of Global Tryst, an online magazine focusing on international issues from a grassroots perspective. He also had stints as an investment banker, a strategy and a business analytics consultant. Nadi holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and graduate degrees in computer science & engineering.
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Director of Strategic Initiatives
Penniman founded the Huffington Post Investigative Fund with Arianna Huffington in 2009. The Fund merged with the Center in January 2011. Previously, he founded the American News Project, an online video journalism operation and before that Penniman served as the Washington director of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, a foundation headed by legendary PBS broadcaster Bill Moyers. He has also served as the publisher of The Washington Monthly magazine; the editor of TomPaine.com; the program director of the Campaign for America’s Future; the associate editor of the American Prospect magazine; the director of the Alliance for Democracy, and the editor of the Lincoln Journal. Penniman remains a contributing editor of the Huffington Post.
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Director of Underwriting Sales
Perpich has a 20-year background in sales and management for print, local and national radio and television, cable television, and digital. Most recently she was retail sales manager for the St. Paul Pioneer Press where she handled $9 million in high-profile accounts. Before that, Perpich worked at Fox 9 TV, Clear Channel and CBS Radio, and Time Warner Cable in Minneapolis. She was also instrumental in the launch of KSTC-TV owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, and served as Local Sales Manager for five years. Perpich holds a degree in speech communications from the University of Minnesota.
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Senior Analyst
Following a 20-year career as a corporate public relations executive, Potter left his position as head of communications for CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, to show the world the dark inner workings of the insurance industry. He has testified before Senate and House committees, briefed several members of Congress and their staffs, appeared with lawmakers at several press conferences, spoken at more than 100 public forums, and has been the subject of numerous articles in the U.S. and foreign media. His new book is called Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans.
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ICIJ Membership Coordinator
Simona Raetz, a German native, joined ICIJ as membership coordinator in November 2009. Before joining the Center, she worked at Hedrick Smith Productions, a PBS Frontline affiliate, where she worked in production research and as an associate producer. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a degree in political science. Her senior year she wrote a thesis examining how societal rules and traditional practices facilitate the spread of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa, for which she received departmental honors. Raetz was a staff writer for her college newspaper, The Corsair, and interned at a local newspaper in Germany.
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ICIJ Intern
Traver Riggins joined the Center as an ICIJ intern in June. She is a cum laude graduate of Howard University and holds and bachelor’s degree in journalism with a minor in anthropology. She was managing editor at the daily campus newspaper The Hilltop where she worked for four years. She has also interned at the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Herald-Times in Bloomington, Indiana.
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Office Manager
Regina Russell studied business management at Roanoke Chowan Community College and George Washington University. She is completing her bachelor’s degree at Trinity College.
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Project Manager, ICIJ
Before joining The Center, Sandoval Palos was assistant city editor at the Sacramento Bee, where he supervised environment, science, and regional development coverage. From 1997 to 2005, he was a Latin America correspondent, based in Mexico City, for the Dallas Morning News and Knight Ridder Newspapers. Sandoval Palos’s career has spanned three decades and includes award-winning coverage of the savings and loan scandal, the deregulation of public utility companies and crime in Latin America. His list of awards includes the Gerald Loeb prize for business journalism, the Overseas Press Club and the Inter-American Press Association. His investigation into the fate of millions of dollars withheld from paychecks of World War II-era Mexican guest workers in the United States fueled a lawsuit that led to a reimbursement by the Mexican government. Sandoval Palos also co-authored the 1997 biography The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement published by Harcourt.
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Senior Reporter
Schulte is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, most recently in 2007 for a series on Baltimore’s arcane ground rent system. Schulte’s other Pulitzer-nominated projects exposed excessive heart surgery death rates in veterans’ hospitals, substandard care by health insurance plans treating low-income people and the hidden dangers of cosmetic surgery in medical offices. He spent much of his career at the Baltimore Sun and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Schulte has received the George Polk Award, two Investigative Reporters and Editors awards, three Gerald Loeb Awards for business writing and two Worth Bingham Prizes for investigative reporting. The University of Virginia graduate is also the author of Fleeced!, an exposé of telemarketing scams.
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Staff Reporter
Schwartz is a multimedia reporter who joined the Center from the Huffington Post Investigative Fund. Before that she was in the investigative unit of ABC News, where she uncovered a secret payment by a Florida congressman to his former mistress. Schwartz also wrote about legal affairs for U.S. News & World Report and was a reporter with Legal Times, covering topics from the U.S. attorney scandal to the trial of Scooter Libby. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and USA Today, among other publications. She was a fellow with Loyola’s Journalist Law School in 2008 and is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley.
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Research Editor
Before coming to the Center, Peter Smith was employed as a law clerk at the firm of Gaffney & Schember, P.C., in Washington, D.C. He received his bachelor’s degree in medieval European history from Harvard University and his law degree from American University.
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Executive Editor
Award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon joined the Center for Public Integrity in March 2010, as its first journalist-in-residence. During his quarter-century career in print and broadcast media, Solomon has covered a variety of issues, from the convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to an in-depth look at teachers who returned to classrooms after child molestation convictions. In 2008 Solomon joined The Washington Times as executive editor. During his tenure, he oversaw more than 50 new products that expanded readership, such as creating a photo syndication service and a broadcast division. Under his leadership, the paper won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 2008 and the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2009 National Public Service Award. Before joining the Times, Solomon was a national investigative correspondent at The Washington Post, where he uncovered former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s secret security firm clients, former Sen. John Edwards’ relationship with a controversial hedge fund, and the FBI’s misuse of an anti-terrorism tool that allowed agents to gather phone and computer records of Americans without court approval. While at the Post, he also produced its first joint project with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” exposing faulty decades-long FBI crime lab bullet analyses that were used to convict hundreds of people. The series won the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award for domestic television in 2008 and the Society of Professional Journalists’ top award for investigative TV reporting. Solomon also spent 20 years as a manager and journalist for The Associated Press, where he oversaw a seven-member investigative team. It exposed Dubai Ports World’s deal to buy several major U.S. ports, which triggered political pressure forcing the company to re-sell the properties to an American firm. The team also uncovered a now-infamous Hurricane Katrina videotape contradicting President George W. Bush’s later claims that top government officials did not expect the storm surge to breach New Orleans’ levees.
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Team Leader, Money and Politics
For the last two decades, Peter Stone has covered a wide array of lobbying and campaign finance issues in Washington. At National Journal, where he spent almost 18 years, Stone broke several scoops on the Jack Abramoff influence peddling scandal. He came to Washington to work for Legal Times in 1990 where he helped lead the paper’s reporting on the BCCI lobbying scandal. Prior to Washington, Stone did a three year stint at The Hartford Courant reporting on insurance and banking, and spent a decade in New York freelancing for papers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Newsday and magazines including The Atlantic, The Nation, and New Times. He started his career at the late muckraking magazine Ramparts, where he was one of the editors in the early 1970’s. Stone is the author of the recently released paperback Casino Jack and the United States of Money about the Abramoff scandal (this is an expanded and updated version of his 2006 book Heist). Stone studied modern European history at the University of Chicago.
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Deputy Editor
Julie Vorman joined the Center in 2010 after more than 20 years as a correspondent, bureau chief, and editor at Reuters. As the Washington company news editor, she guided Reuters’ coverage of federal multi-billion-dollar bailouts to U.S. banks and automakers after the 2008 financial meltdown, the healthcare industry’s influence as Congress attempted to reform healthcare, and changes within the Securities and Exchange Commission after the Madoff investment fraud scheme. Vorman led the Reuters team that won the “Best in Business Breaking News” award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers award for 2003 coverage of the first U.S. case of mad cow disease, and also was Miami/Caribbean bureau chief, U.S. energy editor, and Houston correspondent during her career at Reuters. She worked for United Press International in Dallas and for McGraw-Hill in Washington after interning at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Vorman did her undergraduate work at the University of Northern Iowa and graduate work in mass communications at the University of Iowa.
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ICIJ Deputy Director
Marina Walker Guevara is ICIJ’s deputy director. A native of Argentina, she has reported from a half-dozen countries and her investigations have won and shared more than 12 national and international awards. Over a ten-year career, she has written about environmental degradation in Latin America by multinational corporations; shadowy U.S. government HIV/AIDS prevention programs in Africa, and the cigarette mafia in the Tri-Border Area of South America, among other topics. In March 2006 she was awarded the European Commission Lorenzo Natali Prize (Latin America and the Caribbean region) for her reporting about environmental damage caused in Peru by a U.S.-based mining company; that investigation also won her the 2006 Reuters-IUCN Media Award for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. She graduated magna cum laude from Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina, with a bachelor’s degree in communication sciences, and earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.
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Staff Writer
Kate Willson joined the Center for Public Integrity in 2007 as an investigative reporting fellow after a career in newspapers during which time she received more than 20 regional and national first-place awards for her investigative, enterprise, and crime reporting. She has reported from Central and South America as well as Southeast Asia. Willson received a bachelor’s in French from Oregon State University and a master’s in international print journalism from American University. Having lived in France and Belgium and worked extensively in Colombia, she is fluent in both French and Spanish.
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Managing Editor
Gordon Witkin joined the Center in September 2008 following a long career at U.S. News & World Report and a shorter stint at Congressional Quarterly. At U.S. News, Witkin served as a regional correspondent in Detroit and as bureau chief in Denver, before coming to Washington in 1987. He covered criminal justice for 11 years, before joining the management ranks as chief of correspondents in 1998. Starting in January 2003, he served four and a half years as the news magazine’s national affairs editor. More recently, Witkin spent a year as social policy editor at Congressional Quarterly, supervising coverage of health care, legal affairs, education, immigration, housing, and labor. He began his career at The Indianapolis Star, and has been a freelance contributor to Planning magazine and Tennis magazine. Witkin’s work has been honored by the American Bar Association and the National Press Club.
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Chief Development Officer
Armando Zumaya has been in fundraising for 24 years. He is proudly serving currently as the chief development officer at the Center for Public Integrity. He has spent much of his fundraising career as a major gift, leadership gifts, and annual fund officer on two more-than-$1-billion campaigns at Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley. He began his career in 1985 as a canvasser for SANE/FREEZE in Los Angeles and Ithaca, New York, where he led door-to-door canvassers in the field for five years. Most recently he was the vice president of development at the Children’s Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. Zumaya is well known for his work in teaching prospecting, solicitation, cold calling, major gifts techniques, and remote constituency fundraising. He has been a tireless advocate for improving the Prospect Researcher/Fundraiser relationship and creating a prospecting culture inside development teams. Most notably, he served as the director of development at the San Francisco Opera for more than two years where he directed the refurbishment of their major and planned giving efforts. He was also the director of external relations at the Springboard Schools. At Springboard, he started a new development team in the new area of K-12 major gifts fundraising. He lectures at AFP, APRA, CARA Compass Point and Academic Impressions, AFP International, Blackbaud, and more. He lives in the Northern Virginia and has a 21-year-old daughter and is an alumnus of the University of California, Riverside, and proud graduate of Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles.