BRANT HOUSTON

President

Brant Houston is the Knight Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois where he teaches journalism and works on programs for working journalists. Prior to becoming the Knight Chair, Houston served for more than 10 years as executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), a nonprofit organization of 3,600 members headquartered at the University of Missouri, where he was a professor in journalism. He also is co-founder the Global Investigative Journalism Network and serves on advisory boards of several investigative centers in the United States. He is the author of Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide and co-author of The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook. Before joining IRE, Houston was an award-winning investigative reporter at U.S. daily newspapers for 17 years.

PETER EISLER

Treasurer

Peter Eisler is an investigative reporter at USA TODAY, where he’s reported on everything from lax enforcement of U.S. safe drinking water laws to poor security at Russia’s chemical weapons stockpiles. Eisler’s work has helped spur new laws requiring compensation for sick nuclear weapons workers, fire protections in nursing homes, and safety testing for school lunch food. His awards include prizes from the National Press Club and the National Press Foundation. Eisler is a college lecturer and a journalism mentor at high schools around Washington, DC. Before joining USA TODAY in 1995, he reported for wire services and newspapers in Washington, DC, and Connecticut.

CHARLES LEWIS

Assistant Treasurer

Charles Lewis is a distinguished journalist in residence and executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University in Washington. A former producer for both ABC News and CBS News 60 Minutes, Lewis founded and for 15 years was executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative reporting organization, where he was co-author of five books, including the bestseller, The Buying of the President 2004 (HarperCollins). In 1998, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and in 2004 received the PEN USA First Amendment award.

MARGARET ENGEL

Margaret Engel is executive director of the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the nation’s second oldest journalism foundation. She directs a program that awards fellowships to some of the country’s best reporters, editors and photographers. She also serves as managing editor of the Newseum, the nation’s only interactive museum of news. She is a board member of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and was a reporter and editor at The Washington Post. She formerly reported on state government and health issues for the Des Moines Register, before being named to the paper’s Washington bureau. She began her career at The Lorain Journal.

GARY FIELDS

Gary Fields covers criminal justice issues for The Wall Street Journal, focusing on the corrections system. He previously covered criminal justice for USA Today and The Washington Times. Fields began his career as a sports writer at the Nachitoches (La.) Times. In 1997, he was named Journalist of the Year by the National Association of Black Journalists. Other awards include the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award; the Deadline Club Omnibus Award for Minority Issues; the Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award for covering death penalty issues; the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism; and the National Alliance of Mental Illness Journalism Award.

SARA FRITZ

Sara Fritz is a freelance author and reporter based in Washington, D.C. She has served as executive director of the Faith and Politics Institute and has been a reporter and editor for the Los Angeles Times, U.S. News & World Report, the St. Petersburg Times, and Congressional Quarterly. She is a former president of the White House Correspondents Association, a trustee of Denison University and a longtime member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press . She is the recipient of the Dirksen Award for congressional reporting and Harvard’s Goldsmith award for investigative reporting.

JAMES GRIMALDI

James V. Grimaldi is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post. He won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 2006 for stories he wrote with two Post reporters on the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. The stories also won the Selden Ring Award and the Worth Bingham Prize and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Award. He has written about antitrust, legal affairs, presidential fundraising and politics, Sarah Palin, Microsoft, the Smithsonian Institution and the Washington Redskins. He previously worked for The Seattle Times, Orange County Register and San Diego Tribune.The former president and board member of the nonprofit Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., Grimaldi has been a Knight-Bagehot fellow in business and economics journalism at Columbia University and a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.

STEPHANIE MENCIMER

Stephanie Mencimer is a reporter in the Washington DC bureau of Mother Jones, covering legal affairs and domestic policy. She is the author of Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue.

ALICIA SHEPARD

Alicia C. Shepard is the ombudsman for NPR. She is the author of Woodward & Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate (2006, Wiley), and co-author of Running Toward Danger: Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11 (2002). She has contributed to the American Journalism Review, The New York Times, Washingtonian Magazine, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Newark Star Ledger and The Washington Post. Her work was recognized three times with the National Press Club’s top media criticism prize. She was a staff reporter with The San Jose (CA) Mercury News from 1982 to 1987. Shepard is a judge for the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and teaches a graduate-level course in Media Ethics at Georgetown University.

PATRICK J. SLOYAN

Patrick J. Sloyan has covered national and international affairs since 1960. He has received two Pulitzer Prizes including one for international reporting for an investigative series on the 1992 Gulf War. The former Washington bureau chief of Newsday, Sloyan also won the George Polk Award for war reporting. While covering Europe and the Mideast between 1980 and 1986, Sloyan won the American Society of Newspaper Editors Deadline Writing award for his coverage of the 1982 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and he won the Raymond J. Clapper Award for an investigative series on Defense Department contracting during the Clinton administration. He currently is writing a book on the 1963 assassination of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem.

TERENCE SMITH

Terence Smith is a special correspondent for The NewsHour on the Public Broadcasting System. Over the course of a four-decade career, Smith has been a political reporter, foreign correspondent, editor and television analyst for The New York Times, PBS and CBS News, where he earned two Emmys and shared a George Foster Peabody Award. As a senior producer and correspondent for The NewsHour, Smith headed the media unit that won 18 national awards and honors for its media criticism and analysis.

GEORGE LARDNER

George Lardner, formerly an investigative reporter on the national staff of The Washington Post, is an associate at the Center for the Study of the Presidency, working on a history of the presidential pardon power. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for articles on the murder of his youngest daughter, Kristin, which he later expanded into a book, “The Stalking of Kristin.” He joined The Post in 1963 and has covered presidential campaigns, Mafia trials, assassinations and political scandals ranging from Iran-contra to the CIA and the FBI. He has also written numerous national magazine articles.

DEBORAH NELSON

Deborah Nelson is the Carnegie visiting professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. She joined the University of Maryland faculty in 2006, after five years as Washington investigative editor for the Los Angeles Times. She also reported for The Washington Post, The Seattle Times and The Chicago Sun-Times and served as president of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE). Her national awards include the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative reporting. She is author of “The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth about U.S. War Crimes” (Basic Books 2008).

CLARENCE PAGE

Clarence Page writes a column for the Chicago Tribune that is syndicated in about 150 newspapers around the country. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1989. In 1972 he was a member of a Chicago Tribune task force that was awarded the Pulitzer for its investigation of vote fraud.