Award-winning reporter Brooke Williams, an investigative journalist specializing in data-driven reporting and storytelling to hold the powerful accountable, is joining the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR) as a senior investigative reporter and senior trainer. Her investigations have been featured in local and national newspapers, magazines and online publications, as well as on radio and television.
Before joining NECIR, Brooke was an investigative journalism fellow at Harvard University, where, in 2012, she launched an investigation into think tanks and how their relationships with foreign governments and corporations influence public policy and opinion. Her first investigation in a series she is co-authoring for the New York Times was part of the newspaper's Pulitzer prize winning entry in 2014.
“Brooke Williams is one of the most talented, young investigative reporters in the country. We welcome her to our strong editorial team and look forward to her generating many stories in the years ahead that will make a major difference in the lives of our readers, viewers and listeners,” said NECIR Executive Director Joe Bergantino.
Brooke graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in December 2001 and began her career at the Center for Public Integrity in January 2002, where she co-authored and reported Harmful Error: Investigating Americas Local Prosecutors, The Buying of the President 2004, a best-selling book, and Windfalls of War, an investigation into defense contracts that won a George Polk Award. In 2004, she joined the watchdog team at the San Diego Union-Tribune, where she was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists for stories examining how San Diego mishandled public land.
In 2007, after massive wildfires in San Diego,her investigation into emergency contractors resulted in a federal criminal probe and taxpayer settlement. In 2009, she joined inewsource, a nonprofit news outlet in San Diego, as an investigative reporter, where her story about a newspaper owner and developer was a finalist for the Investigative Reporters and Editors award.
In 2012, she accepted an investigative journalism fellowship with the Lab@Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. In 2014, she joined the Project on Public Narrative at Harvard as an investigative journalism fellow, where she launched a nationwide investigation of federal prosecutors.
Brooke specializes in using data in the investigative reporting process. For the New York Times, she built the first database of foreign government contributions to think tanks. Earlier in her career, she built a national database of alleged local prosecutorial misconduct dating back to 1970.
Brooke’s first day at NECIR is Monday, May 11th.