Kristen Lombardi

Kristen Lombardi heads the Columbia Journalism School’s postgraduate reporting program, Columbia Journalism Investigations, where she has the privilege of helping produce great investigative stories while training the next generation of great investigative reporters. Under her editorial leadership, CJI fellows have dug into worker heat deaths, the mental-health toll of climate-fueled disasters and online-dating companies’ response to sexual assaults, and CJI investigations have won accolades from the South Carolina Press Association, the Association of Health Care Journalists, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Peabody Awards.

Before joining the J-School in August 2018, Kristen spent 11 years as an investigative reporter at the nonprofit newsroom the Center for Public Integrity, covering environmental and social justice issues. She’s been a journalist for 26 years and has received numerous national and regional awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the Dart Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service. In 2013, President Barack Obama signed a law addressing problems exposed by her 2009-10 CPI investigation, “Sexual Assault on Campus.” She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and an Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and has a master’s degree in journalism from Boston University. She’s taught investigative skills classes at Columbia and serves as a master’s adviser for students in the Stabile investigative reporting program.