I am a senior reporter at City Bureau, where I write intimate investigative stories rooted in data, narrative justice and community-centered reporting.
My beat is survival, where I examine how Chicagoans navigate and steward their lives in a complex American city still grappling with decades of segregation and a limited social safety net. I examine how the workings of local government and public health crises often collide in issues of low-wage workplace labor violations, inaccessible mental health services, police misconduct, and gender-based violence.
I am a co-reporter of Missing in Chicago, a seven-part investigative series that exposed systemic patterns of mismanagement in Chicago police’s handling of missing persons cases — which disproportionately affect Black women and girls.
Research for the series was based on an analysis of over 30,000 complaint files, which identified buried patterns of misconduct that marginalized homelessness, substance use, and mental health disorders, and an examination of one million public records. The series received the 2024 Izzy Award for "the qualities of the best local journalism being produced today: deeply investigative, collaborative, data-driven, community-focused, and nonprofit, with an emphasis on multimedia narrative."
My writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Injustice Watch, the Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Reader, Belt Magazine, Chicago Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, BuzzFeed News, South Side Weekly, In These Times, Guernica magazine, Block Club Chicago, and other outlets.
I've written stories and managed projects that connect the public to information to improve their own lives, including The People’s Guide to Community Benefits Agreements and Alternatives, which equips Chicago residents to be active participants in the city's public development process, and The Cord, a text app and series of stories that delivered news and resources directly to pregnant women, mothers, and anyone else who wants information for expecting moms in Chicago.
Over the past seven years with City Bureau, I've worked with hundreds of fellows and led reporting teams covering neighborhood economic development, criminal justice reform, and food justice. I worked as a court reporter in collaboration with WBEZ and Injustice Watch. BuzzFeed News included my reporting in its list of 29 Times Nonprofit Journalism Made A Difference In 2018: "City Bureau reporters followed the opening of the nation's first restorative justice court, on Chicago's West Side, bringing an unprecedented amount of transparency and community input to an experimental and opaque court system."
I was a Social Justice News Nexus fellow at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and an International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) reporting grantee in 2019. There, I designed and wrote Asylum City, a year-long look into the stories of asylum seekers in Chicago that culminated in a 10-part project that included first-person narratives, reported features, and a nonfiction graphic novel. IWMF named me one of 19 women changing journalism in 2019 who "against all odds are turning the tide with reporting that challenges traditional narratives and brings new stories to light."
I won the Chicago Review of Books "Best Essay" award for After Unthinkable Loss and was a finalist for the Chicago Society of Professional Journalists "Best Feature Story" award in 2018. I co-authored "The Promise," a nonfiction graphic novel about one man's asylum journey from Syria to Chicago, which was a finalist for the Chicago Society of Professional Journalists "Best Illustration" award in 2019.
I am a New York University's Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism graduate. Before my career in journalism, I was a public survey project manager and researcher focused on civic engagement in Iraq. I lived and worked in Ghana, Madagascar, Niger, and Iraq.
