Board of Directors

The IRE Board of Directors serves as the governing body of IRE. As a nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting journalists in completing investigative stories of high quality, the IRE board believes in disclosure, and so, makes these records open.

Cheryl Phillips (president) is deputy investigations editor at The Seattle Times; where she was an investigative reporter from 2002 until January 2007. In Seattle, she has twice been a member of reporting teams that were finalists for the Pulitzer prize. Most recently, Phillips reported and wrote for the "Your Courts, Their Secrets" series, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer in investigative reporting this year. She also was part of a team that reported on the Washington, D.C., sniper suspects in 2002. That coverage was a Pulitzer finalist in the breaking news category. Previously, she has worked as computer-assisted reporting editor for USA Today's sports section, as a CAR projects editor at The Detroit News, covered local government and the state legislature at the Great Falls Tribune in Montana and was a reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where she covered stadium issues of the Texas Rangers baseball team and wrote about then-team owner George W. Bush. She can be reached at . (Originally elected 2001; current term expires June 2009.)

Alison Young (vice president) is an investigative reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she covers the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She previously was a member of Knight Ridder's Washington-based investigative team. Before that she spent 10 years at the Detroit Free Press, where she was a reporter, enterprise editor and the deputy metro editor. She also has reported for The Arizona Republic, and the Dallas Times Herald. Young's reporting in 2006 won Scripps Howard, Sigma Delta Chi, Heywood Broun and National Press Club awards. Previous honors include two Gerald Loeb Awards, a National Headliner Award, and the Roy W. Howard Award for Public Service. Young is a graduate of the University of Kansas. (Originally elected 2007; current term expires June 2009.)

Lea Thompson (treasurer) just left NBC where she was Dateline's chief correspondent primarily covering consumer, health, safety and environmental issues for 15 years. She is about to tackle some freelance projects she hopes will make a difference. Thompson, who is a long-time IRE member and a frequent speaker at IRE conferences, began her career at WRC-Washington, D.C., where she was an anchor, reporter, co-head of the investigative unit, and host of the Byline: Lea Thompson show. In 1992, Thompson moved to Dateline and NBC News. Her investigative work was the driving force behind three acts of Congress and has initiated more than two dozen Congressional and governmental agency hearings, as well as prompting recalls and investigations by dozens of federal, state and local governments and brought about numerous changes by manufacturers and retailers. Her work has won every major journalism award including multiple Peabody, Polk, Murrow and national Emmy awards, the Gerald Loeb Award, and duPont Awards and 17 local Emmies. Thompson, is most proud of her multiple IRE Awards and finalist nominations. She can be reached at . (Originally elected 2007; current term expires June 2009.)

Duff Wilson (secretary) is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. He is the first two-time winner of Harvard University’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. He was also honored with two Polk Awards, a Broun, Loeb and Oakes, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist three times while with The Seattle Times. Wilson’s book, Fateful Harvest, won an IRE Award in 2001. In his spare time, he created the Reporter’s Desktop, www.reporter.org/desktop, a Web launch pad used by many journalists. Wilson can be reached by e-mail at . (Originally elected 2006; current term expires June 2010.)

Manny Garcia (executive committee member) is metro editor at The Miami Herald. He has covered general assignment, police, courts and municipal government. He is a former special projects editor, courts and cops editor and member of the Herald’s I-team. Garcia was a key reporter and writer in the Herald’s 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning voter fraud investigation and its 2001 Pulitzer Prize for the Elian Gonzalez raid. He and Jason Grotto shared a 2004 IRE Award for their project “Justice Withheld.” Garcia has done numerous seminars about journalism, including how to get reluctant sources to talk and doing investigations off your beat for IRE, SPJ and at Knight Ridder newspapers. (Originally elected 2006; current term expires June 2010.)

James V. Grimaldi is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post. In 2006, he won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting with two Post reporters for their work on the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. The stories also won the Selden Ring Award and the Worth Bingham Prize. In 2004, Grimaldi worked on a series of stories on major fundraisers in the presidential campaign and in 2003 he co-authored stories on animal deaths at the Smithsonian-run National Zoo that led to the resignation of the zoo's director. Articles he and the Post investigative team reported and wrote after Sept. 11 were part of the Post's entry that was a public-service finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. He won the 2002 Society of American Business Editors and Writers award for breaking news. He was a contributor to the 2001 Post book, "Deadlock: The Inside Story of America's Closest Election." Previously he has won awards from SPJ, the National Press Club and other media organizations. He was a Knight-Bagehot fellow in business and economics journalism and a 2007 Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. You can reach him at . (Originally elected 2001; current term expires June 2009.)

Jason Grotto is an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune and a former staff member of IRE and NICAR. Prior to joining the Tribune in 2007, he was a member of The Miami Herald's investigative reporting team, where he tackled problems relating to the criminal justice system, public schools, Florida's clemency system, police misconduct, economic development programs and voting rights. He is a two-time winner of the IRE Award for Investigative Reporting, along with many other awards. For two years, he helped run NICAR's database library while earning a master's degree from the University of Missouri. During the past 10 years, he has been involved in nearly every aspect of IRE: as a staffer, member, trainer, speaker and mentor to younger journalists. He can be reached at . (Originally elected 2008; current term expires June 2010.)

Stephen C. Miller is assistant to the technology editor at The New York Times. He oversees the training of reporters and editors in the use of new technologies and helps determine the news department's computer and telecommunications needs. He also writes about computers and consumer electronics for the paper. Miller started his career in broadcasting, spending 17 years at CBS News. He is completing his book, While Our Backs Were Turned: How Computers Changed Journalism. Stephen can be reached at . (Originally elected 1998; current term expires June 2010.)

Lise Olsen is a special projects reporter at the Houston Chronicle and has served IRE as a member, staff member and committed volunteer during her 20 years as a journalist in Nebraska, Virginia, Mexico, Washington and Texas. As a computer-assisted reporting specialist, she was among the first graduates of NICAR’s first advanced boot camp in North Carolina. From 1996-98, she served as founding director of the two-year project IRE-Mexico, which later became an independent non-profit. That group helped inspire other non-profits with similar goals in Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. (Originally elected 2007; current term expires June 2009.)

Marilyn Thompson works for The Washington Post. She has had a distinguished 30-year newspaper career with a strong emphasis on investigative journalism that has included serving as the national investigations editor at the Los Angeles Times and holding the post of former executive editor and vice president of The Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader from 2004 to 2006. In 14 years as a reporter and editor at The Washington Post, her positions included metro projects editor and deputy national editor for investigations, investigations editor and assistant managing editor. She has also worked at the The New York Times, New York Daily News, The Philadephia Daily News and The Columbia (S.C.) Record, and has written four non-fiction books, including a biography of Strom Thurmond and a chronicle of the anthrax attacks of 2001. (Originally elected 2007; current term expires June 2009.)

Mc Nelly Torres is a consumer/watchdog reporter for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel where she writes about consumer issues. Previously she was assigned to the Miami bureau where she covered Miami-Dade County and its massive $5.6 billion bureaucracy and the home of more than 2 million people. She was an education reporter for the San Antonio Express-News where she wrote about corruption in school construction. Her work contributed to the conviction of an architect. At the Morning News in South Carolina, she garnered local and state awards for her investigative work on the state's hog farm permit filling process. In Oklahoma, she wrote a three-part series illustrating the sheriff's inability to solve homicides while showing the similarities between them. She worked for small newspapers in Texas where she covered regional news. Mc Nelly holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Colorado State University-Pueblo, formerly known as the University of Southern Colorado. Her current work as a consumer reporter has led to the conviction of a businessman with a history of defrauding consumers and an attorney general investigation and subsequent lawsuit of a foreclosure rescue firm. Mc Nelly was born and raised in Puerto Rico but has lived around the world while following a military husband who retired in 2005. Mc Nelly can be reached at . (Originally elected 2008; current term expires June 2010.)

Lawan Williams is not the traditional journalist - graduating from journalism school and entering the business right out of college. She took a different route by serving in the U.S. military and then working for the Coca-Cola Company for almost 10 years before pursuing her dream to become a journalist. She started as a news trainee at WSB in Atlanta. It was a great opportunity that sold her on investigative reporting. Going to IRE, she discovered her corporate computer skills would come in handy in journalism - so she diligently studied CAR. She worked as a consumer investigative producer at WFTV in Orlando, Fla. From there she moved to Phoenix to join the ABC 15 investigators at KNXV, where she was able to do some extraordinary work with some extraordinary journalists. Currently, she works as the executive producer for investigations and special projects at KSHB in Kansas City. (Originally elected 2008; current term expires June 2010.)

Phil Williams is the chief investigative reporter for WTVF-TV in Nashville, Tennessee, where his reporting has focused primarily on government waste and corruption. Phil says he cannot remember a time as a child when he did not want to be an investigative reporter. Over the years, his investigations have led to criminal charges against friends of a former Tennessee governor, several lawmakers and other political figures. His work has been honored with two George Foster Peabody Awards, a duPont-Columbia Award, a George Polk Award, two Sigma Delta Chi Awards, a national Edward R. Murrow Award, a national Emmy Award and multiple regional Emmys. Most importantly to him, Phil has received three IRE Awards - including the IRE Medal - as well as being a finalist numerous other times. He was also a finalist for Harvard University's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Prior to his broadcasting days, Phil was a reporter for The Tennessean in Nashville, where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for public service. (Originally elected 2008; current term expires June 2010.)