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Stephen Engelberg, Editor-in-Chief

Stephen Engelberg was the founding managing editor of ProPublica from 2008-2012, and became editor-in-chief on January 1, 2013. He came to ProPublica from The Oregonian in Portland, where he had been a managing editor since 2002. Before joining The Oregonian, Mr. Engelberg worked for The New York Times for 18 years, including stints in Washington, D.C., and Warsaw, Poland, as well as in New York. He is a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board and of the Board of Directors of the American Society of News Editors.

After beginning his career at the Times, he worked as a reporter for The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk and for The Dallas Morning News before returning to the Times to write news and investigative articles on national security matters. After a stint as the Times bureau chief in Warsaw immediately following the collapse of Communism, he resumed his work as an investigative reporter in 1993. Mr. Engelberg shared in two George Polk Awards for reporting: the first, in 1989, for articles on nuclear proliferation; the second, in 1994, for articles on U.S. immigration. A group of articles he co-authored in 1995 on an airplane crash was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

Mr. Engelberg’s work since 1996 has focused largely on the editing of investigative projects. He started the Times’s investigative unit in 2000. Projects he supervised at the Times on Mexican corruption (published in 1997) and the rise of Al Qaeda (published beginning in January 2001) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. During his years at The Oregonian, the paper won the Pulitzer for breaking news and was a finalist for its investigative work on methamphetamines and charities intended to help the disabled. He is the co-author of “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War” (2001).

Richard Tofel, President

Richard Tofel was the founding general manager of ProPublica from 2007-2012, and became president on January 1, 2013. He has responsibility for all of ProPublica’s non-journalism operations, including communications, legal, development, finance and budgeting, and human resources. He was formerly the assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal and, earlier, an assistant managing editor of the paper, vice president, corporate communications for Dow Jones & Company, and an assistant general counsel of Dow Jones. More recently, he served as vice president, general counsel and secretary of the Rockefeller Foundation, and earlier as president and chief operating officer of the International Freedom Center, a museum and cultural center that was planned for the World Trade Center site. He is the author of “Home Run Revolution: Babe Ruth in His Time, 1919-20” (2015), “Non-Profit Journalism: Issues Around Impact” (2013), “Why American Newspapers Gave Away the Future” (2012), “Eight Weeks in Washington, 1861: Abraham Lincoln and the Hazards of Transition” (2011), “Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism” (2009); “Sounding the Trumpet: The Making of John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address” (2005), “Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater, and the New York He Left Behind” (2004) and “A Legend in the Making: The New York Yankees in 1939” (2002).

Robin Fields, Managing Editor

Robin Fields became managing editor of ProPublica on January 1, 2013. She joined ProPublica as a reporter in 2008 and became a senior editor in 2010. As an editor, she has overseen projects on political dark money, injection wells, the military’s handling of traumatic brain injuries, police violence in post-Katrina New Orleans, cell tower deaths, and the nation’s troubled system of death investigations. Work she has edited has twice been honored with George Polk Awards, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and IRE. These projects also have resulted in four documentaries made in partnership with PBS “Frontline,” two of which received Emmy nominations. As a reporter at ProPublica, Fields did a project on U.S. dialysis care and wrote stories about a troubled chain of psychiatric hospitals. Fields was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for her work on dialysis, which was also honored by IRE and the Society of Professional Journalists and received the Gannett Foundation Award for Innovative Investigative Journalism. Fields began her career at the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida. Before joining ProPublica, spent nine years as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, where she worked on investigations into political fundraiser Norman Hsu, California’s adult guardianship system and abuses at the J. Paul Getty Trust. Her work on guardianship received the National Journalism Award for investigative reporting, a Sigma Delta Chi Public Service Award and an Associated Press Managing Editors Public Service Award.

Ragan Rhyne, Vice President, Development

With more than 15 years of nonprofit executive experience, Ragan Rhyne has effectively developed programs and built relationships for global, national and regional institutions. She most recently served as senior director of development and strategic programming for the International Center of Photography, where she steered organizational and fundraising strategy, managed a portfolio of major donors, and directed special events.

Rhyne has also held senior development positions at the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, Prospect Park Alliance, Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, and the World Monuments Fund. Holding a doctorate in media studies from New York University, Rhyne’s research and publications focus on the political economy of nonprofit media organizations and their role in the development of social movements. She has taught media and cultural studies at New York University, Hunter College and Queens College.

Celeste LeCompte, Vice President of Business Development

Celeste LeCompte is a media entrepreneur and journalist with a special focus on innovation, sustainable business and open technologies. She has advised on product development and content strategy for numerous media companies, nonprofits and corporate clients.

LeCompte previously served on the launch team for Gigaom Research, a market research service specializing in emerging technologies. As director of product and special projects editor, she developed editorial strategy, oversaw consumer sales and managed partnerships with major media outlets. LeCompte was also a co-founder and business manager of Climate Confidential, a crowdfunded reporting project that examined the intersection of environment and technology in collaboration with national and local media partners. As a 2015 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, LeCompte studied motivations for news consumption, with an eye toward developing new, reader-centric media business models.

Louise Kiernan, Editor-in-Chief, ProPublica Illinois

Louise Kiernan is editor-in-chief of ProPublica Illinois, the first regional operation of ProPublica. She comes to ProPublica from Northwestern University, where she was an associate professor of journalism, focusing on investigative and narrative reporting, and the leader of the program’s social justice and investigative journalism specialization. Prior to that, she worked for the Chicago Tribune for 18 years, serving as the newspaper’s enterprise editor, writing coach, urban affairs team editor and a special projects team editor and reporter, among other roles. She was the lead writer on a project that won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting and has also been a Pulitzer finalist. She was a 2005 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, has served on the Nieman fellowship selection committee and chaired two Pulitzer Prize juries, for investigative and explanatory reporting. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Virginia.

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