Haley Willis, a premiere investigative journalist who masters combining digital and open source methods with traditional reporting to cover the human cost of conflict, political unrest, and state violence, has joined Columbia Journalism School’s Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism as Associate Director.
Willis, who has co-taught the school’s seminal “Conflict & OSINT Reporting” course for the last four years as an adjunct professor, will expand her role to further develop open source intelligence (or OSINT) reporting curricula and programming, provide mentorship to students pursuing work in the field of open source investigations, and foster open source collaborations and partnerships with the Li Center.
“Haley Willis is one of the most brilliant and innovative journalists of her generation, whose humanity and compassion shines through her work and her teaching,” said Azmat Khan, Director of the Li Center and Patti Cadby Birch Assistant Professor. “She is beloved by our students and makes everyone around her a better journalist, and I could not be more excited to deepen our visual forensics work with her at Columbia Journalism School.”
Willis most recently worked as a video journalist with the Visual Investigations team at The New York Times. While there, she worked on investigations that probed Russian atrocities in Ukraine, Israel’s use of 2,000 pound bombs in areas it designated as “safe zones” in Gaza, civilian casualty assessments from the U.S. air war in the Middle East, forced labor in China, impunity of Syrian officials of the fallen Assad regime, and police killings during traffic stops in the United States. For this and other work, she has shared in four Pulitzer Prizes, four George Polk Awards, three Overseas Press Club of America Awards, two Society of Publishers in Asia Awards, two Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, a Peabody Award, and a News Emmy.
“The students have been the highlight of my time as an adjunct professor with the journalism school. Their fierce commitment to true accountability journalism inspires me every day,” Willis said. “The Li Center has been at the forefront of bringing open source investigations training to these journalists, and I’m excited to carry that on in this new role.”
Prior to joining The Times in 2019, Willis worked as a researcher and lab coordinator with the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law and as a project manager with Amnesty International’s Digital Verification Corps.
The Li Center was established through a generous gift from founders Simon Li, '70 M.S., and June Li, longtime supporters of scholarships at Columbia Journalism School, including those for students from outside of the United States.
