Director

Jeffery Gerritt

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jeffery Gerritt has more than 30 years’ experience as an investigative reporter, editor, columnist, editorial writer, and editorial-page editor at the Detroit Free Press, USA Today, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Toledo Blade, and the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

He has reported from Tanzania, Brazil, and Cuba, as well as from Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza as a columnist for the Detroit Free Press. In 2022, Gerritt spent six weeks in Ukraine, covering the refugee crisis as the editorial-page editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Much of Gerritt’s work has focused on prison, criminal justice, and urban issues, including mass incarceration, poverty, drugs, addiction, and homelessness. His 2020 Pulitzer Prize honored a series of investigative editorials exposing the needless, often horrific, deaths of prisoners in Texas county jails.

Gerritt has won more than 80 other national and state journalism awards, including four National Headliner Awards, four medallions from the national Society of Professional Journalists, two Scripps Howard Awards, a Burl Osborne Editorial and Opinion Award from the News Leaders Association, a Carmage Walls Prize for Commentary, and a Batten Medal.

A former jazz and rock drummer, Gerritt earned a B.A. degree from the University of Wisconsin in philosophy and music and a master’s degree in journalism from Marquette University, where he also worked as a night security guard at O’Donnell Hall.

Graduate Program Assistants                  

Hannah Hernandez

Hannah Hernandez is a second-year graduate student studying communication and media studies. In 2023-24 year, Hernandez continued her O'Brien reporting with O'Brien Fellow Pamela K. Johnson and her series on justice and water. She contributed to O'Brien Fellow Lauren Lindstrom's series on unsafe rental housing in 2022-23. Hernandez was also an assistant news editor at the Marquette Wire. She graduated in May 2023 with a B.A. in journalism and a double minor in writing-intensive English and Spanish from Marquette. With journalism, she wants to use her words to make a change in the world and shine a light on things that are swept under the rug. She wants to put a microphone on those who are speaking but aren't heard.

Nathan Lampres

Nathan Lampres is a first-year graduate student studying digital communication strategies. Last May, Lampres graduated cum laude from Marquette University with a B.A. in advertising and digital media. During his undergraduate career, he has interned with Marquette University Athletics, Summerfest, Make-A-Wish Illinois, and the Schaumburg Boomers. After his M.A. studies, Lampres plans to enter the digital marketing field and help companies grow by enhancing their ability to reach consumers, clients, and the community.

 

Key Partners

Greg Borowski

Greg Borowski is the executive editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Projects he’s overseen have won the top honors in journalism, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Worth Bingham Prize, the George Polk Award, the Goldsmith Prize, the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, the Barlett & Steele Awards and the Investigative Reporters and Editors competition. Before moving into editing in 2008, he won numerous awards as a reporter at the Journal Sentinel, and at newspapers in Michigan and Indiana. A Milwaukee native, Borowski is a graduate of Marquette University.