Team
Julia Angwin
Founder, CEO, Editor-in-Chief
Julia Angwin is an award-winning investigative journalist, a bestselling author, and a New York Times contributing Opinion writer.
At the newsroom she founded, The Markup, she codified the practice of publishing rigorous methodologies and the code and data used in the newsroom’s analyses, so that anyone could check or refute the conclusions.
Her landmark investigations into privacy at The Wall Street Journal pioneered the use of engineers to forensically examine digital surveillances. At ProPublica, she forged a new field of algorithmic accountability with investigations that revealed racial bias in criminal risk assessment algorithms and prompted several discrimination lawsuits against Facebook for its biased ad placement algorithms.
She is a winner and two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting. She is also the author of the New York Times bestseller “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance” (Times Books, 2014) and “Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America” (Random House, March 2009).
She earned a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University. She is currently a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and was previously Entrepreneur in Residence at Columbia Journalism School’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation.
Nhadine Leung
Chief Operating Officer
Nhadine brings more than 25 years of diverse experience in the nonprofit, legal, and banking sectors. Her career, which has included executive roles at organizations including the Heron Foundation, Girl Scouts of the USA, Mission Investors Exchange, and Living Cities, has been dedicated to supporting the people, places, and organizations working to make our communities and the world a better place for all. Before her career in the nonprofit sector, Nhadine practiced law at Weil Gotshal & Manges and worked as an investment banker/currency trader in New York.
Contributors
Lauren Feeney
Executive Producer
Lauren oversees video production for Proof’s key projects. She has devoted her career to experimenting with new forms and new platforms for serious documentary and investigative video journalism, including many years as a senior digital producer for PBS and more recently as director of video for The Intercept. Lauren’s work has been featured on-air and online at PBS, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Intercept, among other publications, and has been honored with four Edward R. Murrow awards and an Emmy nomination among other distinctions.
Annie Gilbertson
Reporter
Annie reports for Proof News, tackling powerful institutions to expose social injustice and excite change. Before joining Proof, she reported on issues of trust and safety as well as algorithmic harms in policing and health care for The Markup. Annie’s work spans print, broadcast and podcasting, and she spent more than a decade in public radio. She’s contributed to stories published by the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR and WNYC’s “On the Media,” among others.
Aaron Gordon
Investigative Climate Reporter
Aaron worked with Proof’s editors to report on the climate impacts of technology. Before Proof, Aaron was a senior staff writer at Motherboard, VICE News’s tech and science website, where he covered transportation, infrastructure, and the environment. Before Motherboard, Aaron was a senior investigative reporter at Jalopnik, transportation reporter for the Village Voice, founder of the NYC subway newsletter Signal Problems, and staff writer at VICE Sports.
Rina Palta
Data Editor
Rina provides editing and data journalism oversight to several of Proof’s key projects. Before joining Proof, she worked as news editor at The Markup. Rina spent the majority of her career covering prisons, crime, and homelessness as an investigative reporter for KPCC in Los Angeles and KALW in San Francisco. Her work has been honored with an Edward R. Murrow Award and a Gerald Loeb Award.
Angie Rivera
Executive Assistant
Angie provides executive and administrative support to Proof News. She has more than 20 years’ experience supporting top level executives in the philanthropic, consumer goods, and franchise business sectors, including with The Heron Foundation, Subway Franchise World Headquarters, Procter & Gamble, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Dillon St. Bernard
Digital Strategist
Dillon coordinates creator and influencer engagement for Proof. He has supported more than 40 brands and nonprofit organizations as a strategic communications consultant. His expertise has been featured on platforms such as Forbes, SiriusXM, Yahoo News, NowThis, and VICE. Dillon is committed to using digital media as a tool to meet historically excluded audiences where they are online.