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Monica Sager is a graduate student at Northwestern Medill specializing in the Investigative Lab program. She most recently covered education for the Medill News Service. Before her time at Medill, Monica graduated from Clark University with an MS in Communications and a BA in Journalism and Psychology. Monica has previously worked and freelanced for Central Mass Town Square, The Telegram & Gazette, WGBH, The Week UK, The Big Easy, The Forward and more. You can follow Monica on Twitter at @MonicaSager3 and read more of her work at https://msager30.wixsite.com/monicasager/articles.
Claire Gardner is a third year undergraduate student in the Medill Investigative Lab at Northwestern University. She recently pivoted to journalism, coming from a background in law/government internships, childcare work, teaching, and leadership of and performance on high-level Mock Trial teams. Claire is studying Spanish at the intermediate-advanced level and spent a semester living and working in Spain. She likes how investigative journalism combines the logic and writing of legal work with the interpersonal skills and direct social impact of teaching and camp counseling. She is interested in exploring all mediums of storytelling, especially video and audio.
Evan Robinson-Johnson is a Medill Investigative Lab member focusing on video and feature reporting. The Boston native also covers race and immigration for the Medill News Service. After earning a bachelors in journalism from Northwestern University, he reported on health and education for the Jackson Hole News&Guide, earning Wyoming Press Association awards for beat reporting and feature writing.
Margaret Fleming is a graduate student in the Medill Investigative Lab with a special interest in sports investigations. She graduated early from Medill in 2022 with a journalism major and history minor. In her time at Northwestern, she broadcast games, hosted live talk shows and directed podcasts at WNUR Sports. She has interned with CNBC’s investigative team, The Colorado Sun and Pittsburgh’s NPR station, and has contributed to investigations in ProPublica. She also has bylines in The Tampa Bay Times, The Equalizer women’s soccer magazine and InsideNU.
Nicole Tan is a sophomore at Northwestern University studying journalism, legal studies and political science with the IMC certificate. She was previously a junior reporter with the South China Morning Post (YP) in Hong Kong, winning Best Story of the Month for her coverage of a charity event celebrating East Asian culture. She also interned at Midstory, a Toledo-based media organization and thinkhub, writing long-form features highlighting sustainability, minority life and Midwestern culture. On campus, Nicole has worked at The Daily Northwestern as a print managing editor and social media editor.
Molly Burke is a senior in the Medill Investigative Lab through the accelerated master’s program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She is studying investigative journalism and will receive a bachelor’s and master’s in journalism, as well as a minor in legal studies. She has covered courts and Title IX while at Medill, with bylines in The Chicago Tribune and United Press International. She previously has worked covering breaking and daily news for The Sacramento Bee and The Denver Post. She also worked as a data journalist for the Bay City News Foundation through the Dow Jones News Fund.
Bridgette Adu-Wadier is a sophomore at Northwestern University, where she studies journalism and political science. She has produced multimedia work for local and national organizations such as PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, C-SPAN, Chicago’s PBS station WTTW and her local hometown newspaper The Alexandria Gazette. She is currently an anchor, reporter and executive producer for her campus broadcast station, Northwestern News Network, where she continues to grow her broadcast reporting skills. Bridgette has reported on racial and educational equity in the Chicago and Washington, D.C. metro areas, and values the power of social justice digital storytelling. This summer, she will join NBC News NOW as an intern.
Susanti Sarkar is a graduate student at Northwestern’s Medill School specializing in the Investigative Lab program, with an interest in print and video reporting. She has a Bachelors in Science from the University of California, San Diego and spent more than a year in India reporting on social justice issues including the farmers’ protests and inequality in marginalized communities. She is interested in covering social justice issues including race, immigration, and education, through an investigative lens.
Twitter: @SusantiSarkar
Grant Schwab is a government bureaucrat turned journalist. He is currently a graduate student in the Politics, Policy and Foreign Affairs specialization of the MSJ program, focusing on data-driven reporting. Grant has also earned a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Virginia and worked for several years as a public servant in North Carolina.
His work has appeared in MarketWatch, Inside Climate News, Sojourners, South Side Weekly and others. You can view his portfolio on Muck Rack or follow him on Twitter @GrantSchwab.
Debbie Cenziper is an associate professor and the director of investigative reporting at Medill. She also oversees the Medill Investigative Lab. Besides teaching, Cenziper is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and nonfiction author who writes for The Washington Post. She spent three years at The George Washington University before joining the faculty of Medill.
Over the years, Cenziper’s investigative stories have exposed wrongdoing, prompted Congressional hearings and led to changes in federal and local laws. In her classes at Medill, Cenziper and her students focus on social justice investigative reporting.
Cenziper has won dozens of awards in American print journalism, including the Robert F. Kennedy Award for reporting about human rights and the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from Harvard University. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 at The Miami Herald for a series of stories about corrupt affordable housing developers who were stealing from the poor. A year before that, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for stories about dangerous breakdowns in the nation’s hurricane-tracking system.
Cenziper is a frequent speaker at universities, writing conferences and book events. Her first book, “Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality,” (William Morrow, 2016) was named one of the most notable books of the year by The Washington Post. Her second book, “Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler’s Hidden Soldiers in America,” was released by Hachette Books in November 2019.
Cenziper is based on Medill’s Washington, D.C. campus, working with undergraduate and graduate students on investigative stories.