Megan Twohey

Megan Twohey was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Evanston, Illinois, where her parents were both involved in news media. Her mother, Mary Jane Twohey, was a television news producer, and her father, John Twohey, was an editor for the Chicago Tribune. Megan Twohey attended Evanston Township High School and later Georgetown University, graduating in 1998 with a Bachelor’s degree in American studies. During her time at college, she interned at the ABC News production Nightline. Her career in journalism began with writing for the Washington Monthly and the National Journal, followed by a year as a reporter for The Moscow Times. In 2002, she joined the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel as a general assignment reporter, and then moved to the Chicago Tribune to focus on investigative reporting. She continued her impactful work at Reuters before joining The New York Times in 2016.

At The New York Times, Twohey initially investigated Donald Trump’s tax history, business ties to Russia, and his past treatment of women. A significant milestone in her career came on October 5, 2017, when she and fellow New York Times journalist Jodi Kantor published a groundbreaking report on Harvey Weinstein, detailing decades of sexual abuse allegations. This reporting played a crucial role in igniting the global #MeToo movement. For this work, The New York Times was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Twohey and Kantor also received the George Polk Award and were named to Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people of the year. Their investigation was chronicled in their 2019 book, “She Said,” which was later adapted into a film in 2022, with Carey Mulligan portraying Twohey. Twohey was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2014 for her work on abandoned children.

Throughout her career, Megan Twohey’s investigative journalism has consistently driven change. In 2009, her reporting for the Chicago Tribune exposed numerous suburban police departments around Chicago for not submitting all rape kits for testing, leading to Illinois becoming the first U.S. state to mandate testing for every rape kit. From 2010 to 2011, her series of articles in the Chicago Tribune on predatory doctors who continued to practice despite convictions for violent felonies or sex crimes resulted in new legislation and policies in Illinois to protect patients. Her 2013 Reuters report on an underground network where adopted children were abandoned via the internet garnered her a Sydney Award and the Michael Kelly Award. More recently, in December 2021, Twohey and Gabriel Dance investigated a web forum dedicated to encouraging suicide, which led to a letter from U.S. House of Representatives members to the Attorney General, requesting action against the site.