New IRE fellowship honors Susan Carroll

(September 23, 2025) — Investigative Reporters and Editors has a new fellowship in honor of the late Susan Carroll Alvarez, a fearless watchdog journalist beloved for her mentorship and leadership skills. 

Family members, friends and journalists around the country have raised more than $25,000 to create the new Susan Carroll Fellowship to support journalists covering the border and immigration. 

Lise Olsen, Investigations Editor at The Texas Observer, wanted to start the fund to help journalists covering a beat near and dear to Carroll — and inspire deeper conversations around mental health and self-care for journalists.

Carroll died by suicide in May 2024.

“I hope that by sharing that this fellowship is named for a great investigative journalist — and a beloved IRE member we lost to mental illness — that we, her IRE family members, might deepen our own discussions about mental health and self-care,” Lise Olsen said in an article for The IRE Journal.

“Susan should still be with us. She should still be hitting me up for coffee and leading IRE panels. She should still be raising her beloved boys and doing incredible work. Instead, through this fellowship, others will be able to attend IRE conferences in her name — and hopefully aim for new heights in their own work.” 

Over a storied career at the Tucson Citizen, Arizona Republic, Houston Chronicle, ProPublica and NBC News, Carroll covered the toughest of topics, from heartbreaking toddler deaths and toxic chemical stockpiles to deadly gang leaders in the heart of Central America.

Her work prompted change in laws and earned her numerous awards, including IRE, the National Press Foundation and the National Headliner Award.

Carroll became an IRE member in 2002 and regularly attended and taught at IRE conferences over the years. She met her husband, a fellow journalist at the time, at the 2006 IRE Conference in Fort Worth, Texas.

The inaugural fellowship will be awarded for the 2026 IRE Conference in Washington, D.C.

Generous donations from NBCUniversal and the Houston Chronicle helped get the fund started. A team of NBC reporters who won a George Polk Award for a project Susan initiated contributed their $2,000 prize, and individual donations from friends, family and colleagues pushed the total past the $25,000 needed to establish a named endowment fund.

Make a contribution to the fund here.