ProPublica Staff

Officers

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.

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Robin Sparkman, President

Robin Sparkman succeeded Richard Tofel as president of ProPublica after his retirement from the post in September 2021. She has responsibility for all of ProPublica’s non-journalism operations, including communications, legal, development, finance and budgeting, and human resources. Prior to ProPublica, Sparkman was the founding CEO of nonprofit media organization StoryCorps. Previously, she spent more than two decades as a reporter and editor. She served as editor-in-chief of the American Lawyer from 2010-2014, and earlier as executive editor, as well as deputy editorial director of parent company American Lawyer Media. Previous work included stints at MSNBC.com and Newsweek.

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Robin Fields, Managing Editor

Robin Fields became managing editor of ProPublica on January 1, 2013. 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. As a reporter, 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.

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Charles Ornstein, Managing Editor, Local

Charles Ornstein oversees the Local Reporting Network, as well as ProPublica offices in the Midwest, the South, the Southwest and a unit operated with The Texas Tribune. Projects he has worked on as both a reporter and editor have been recognized with the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, as well as other national journalism awards. From 2008 to 2017, he was a senior reporter covering health care and the pharmaceutical industry.

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Ragan Rhyne, Senior Vice President, Development

Ragan Rhyne is ProPublica's senior vice president, development. With more than 15 years of nonprofit executive experience, 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.

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Celeste LeCompte, Vice President of Strategy & Operations

Celeste LeCompte is the vice president of strategy and operations at ProPublica, focused on revenue, partnerships and other strategic initiatives. In her previous roles, she has worked on product development, content strategy and editorial management for numerous media companies, nonprofits and corporate clients.

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Scott Klein, Deputy Managing Editor

Scott leads the teams at ProPublica that work at the intersection of journalism and technology. In addition to leading editorial product development and engineering, he oversees the interactive projects that tell journalistic stories using data, and that make complex subjects relevant to readers and their communities.

His teams have been recognized with a Peabody Award, several Online Journalism Awards for General Excellence, Malofiej International Infographics Award medals, the Data Journalism Award Jurors Choice Award, as well as Society for News Design Awards of Excellence, including one special recognition for “defining the design language of data-driven news apps.”

Scott is also co-founder of DocumentCloud, a service that helps news organizations search, manage and present their source documents. He sits on the board of the Muckrock Foundation.

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Ginger Thompson, Chief of Correspondents

Ginger Thompson is ProPublica's chief of correspondents. In addition to reporting and writing, Ginger Thompson oversees ProPublica’s staff development and recruitment efforts. She joined ProPublica from The New York Times in 2014. She has spent much of her career covering Latin America, and her work has won numerous awards.

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Eric Umansky, Deputy Managing Editor

Eric Umansky is a deputy managing editor of ProPublica, where he has overseen two Pulitzer Prize-winning projects. Most recently, a series he edited on NYPD abuse of “nuisance abatement” laws won the Pultizer Gold Medal for Public Service. He is also a co-founder of Document Cloud.

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Tracy Weber, Deputy Managing Editor

Tracy Weber helps oversee and maximize projects across the newsroom. Prior to this role, as a senior editor, she guided landmark projects on family separation, jailhouse informants, the dismantling of workers’ compensation and a Mexican massacre touched off by the Drug Enforcement Administration, among others. Work she edited has earned virtually every significant honor in journalism, including the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. As a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, Weber won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2005 and was a finalist for the same award at ProPublica in 2010.

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Stephanie Little, Vice President, Finance & Administration

Stephanie Little oversees all financial activities for the organization, including financial planning, management and analysis. She also directs human resources policy and benefits administration and brings experience in nonprofit management to the role. Prior to joining ProPublica in March 2016, as director of finance and human resources, her career has spanned such prestigious organizations as The Metropolitan Opera and The New York Times. She holds an MBA in finance and media studies from Fordham University and was named a 92Y Women in Power Fellow in 2018.

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Jeremy Kutner, General Counsel

Jeremy Kutner is general counsel at ProPublica, where he provides legal advice on the organization’s full range of activities, with emphasis on its newsroom. He has litigated cases involving libel, freedom of information laws, subpoenas seeking testimony from reporters about sources, and access to sealed documents. Prior to joining ProPublica as deputy general counsel in 2018, Kutner practiced media law at Ballard Spahr (formerly Levine, Sullivan, Koch & Schulz), and was a First Amendment Fellow at The New York Times.

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Diego Sorbara, Assistant Managing Editor

Diego Sorbara is an assistant managing editor at ProPublica. He helps ensure the consistency and quality of the newsroom’s work and oversees freelance reporting expenditures and production. Sorbara joined ProPublica in 2018 as the newsroom's first standards editor after 10 years at The New York Times.

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Alexandra Zayas, Assistant Managing Editor

Alexandra Zayas is an assistant managing editor at ProPublica, running a team of reporters and coordinating across the newsroom to enhance its special projects. Stories she edited have won two National Magazine Awards, two George Polk Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. As an investigative reporter, she won the Selden Ring and Livingston awards and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

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