Lam Thuy Vo

Lam Thuy Vo is a journalist who marries data analysis with on-the-ground reporting to examine how systems and policies affect individuals. She is currently a Soros Justice fellow, a Type Investigations Ida B. Wells fellow, and a data-journalist-in-residence at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York.

Previously, she worked for BuzzFeed News, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera America, and NPR's Planet Money.

She has told stories at the intersection of economics, technology, and society for more than a decade and has documented how power imbalances, when baked into systems, adversely impact those who are already living on the margins. She has documented how excessive "quality-of-life" complaints led to the over-policing of minorities and the raids of Black-owned businesses.

She has also looked into how changes in immigration enforcement drove immigrants into the arms of fraudulent lawyers. And she has looked into the powerful role that technology has played in the surveillance of teens, the policing of protesters, and the perpetuation of anti-Muslim hate by Myanmar politicians.

She's won or been nominated for more than 30 awards for her work as a reporter, storyteller, and leader in the field. Among the organizations that have recognized her work are the Overseas Press Club, the Online News Association, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and the Poynter Institute.

She has also worked as an educator, scholar, and public speaker for a decade, developing newsroom-wide training programs for institutions including Al Jazeera America and The Wall Street Journal; workshops for journalists across the U.S. as well as from Asia, Latin America, and Europe; and semester-long courses for CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. In addition, she's brought her research about misinformation and the impact of algorithms on our political views to Harvard, Georgetown, MIT, Columbia, and the research group Data and Society.

In 2019, she published a book about her empirical approach to finding stories in data from the Internet for No Starch Press.

She is also committed to helping her industry become more diverse. She co-administers a Slack community for journalists of color and co-created a resource guide for journalists of color looking for career growth, salary data, demographics breakdowns of newsrooms, and training opportunities.

A German-born Vietnamese immigrant, she made her way to New York City via London, Berlin, Hong Kong, and Oakland.

She taught herself how to code by making data visualizations about breakups, and she learned how to use a hammer drill to build inclusive rock climbing routes on the sides of the Rocky Mountains.