Cheryl W. Thompson is an investigative correspondent for NPR, an associate professor of journalism at George Washington University and president of Investigative Reporters and Editors. Before coming to NPR in 2019, she spent 22 years as a beat reporter and investigative reporter with The Washington Post, writing extensively about law enforcement, political corruption, guns and the White House during Obama’s first term.

Her stories include a national investigation that found nearly one person a week died after being Tasered by police. That story was part of the newspaper’s year-long series on police shootings that won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2016. Ms.Thompson’s investigation into political corruption in Maryland led to a state and federal investigation that resulted in the arrest and conviction of the county executive, his wife and several others.

She has won numerous awards, including an Emmy, National Headliner, Freedom of Information Medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors, three Salute to Excellence awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, and a Society of Professional Journalists Dateline award for feature writing for an investigation into the 50-year-old unsolved murders of six little black girls in the nation’s capital. Thompson also was part of a team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. She was the 2018 recipient of the GW School of Media and Public Affairs Staub Faculty Excellence award. She was named NABJ’s Educator of the Year in 2017, and was GW’s Honey Nashman Faculty of the Year recipient in 2014. Before coming to The Post, she was on the investigative team of the Kansas City Star, and worked as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, the Daily News of Los Angeles, the Gainesville (FL) Sun and the News-Gazette in Champaign, IL.

A Chicago native, Ms. Thompson has a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She also serves as vice president of the  Fund for Investigative Journalism, is a founding board member of the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism, and launched a student NABJ chapter on the GW University campus in 2014 where she serves as advisor.