AARON GLANTZ
Pulitzer Finalist, Peabody & duPont Award-winning journalist
Author of several books, including Homewreckers
Aaron Glantz is a two-time Peabody Award winner, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and senior editor at NPR's California Newsroom, where he oversees data-driven investigations on climate change. As a journalist, he leverages data for measurable impact -- better management of forests, more efficient compensation for fire victims, and strategic investment in critical infrastructure -- which will be necessary as the planet warms and sea levels rise. Glantz previously served as senior reporter at Reveal, where his work focused on banking, the housing sector, and military affairs. His journalism has sparked more than a dozen congressional hearings, numerous laws and criminal probes by the Drug Enforcement Administration, FBI, Pentagon and Federal Trade Commission. A multiple Emmy Award nominee and former John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, Glantz's work has appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, NBC Nightly News, Good Morning America and PBS NewsHour. His books include Homewreckers, Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations (editor), The War Comes Home, and How America Lost Iraq. In 2022, Aaron joined the faculty of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism as a Visiting Professor. He lives in San Francisco.
Speech topics
Leveraging Big Data in the Fight Against Climate Change
The solutions to climate change don't all lie in reducing our carbon footprint. We must also adapt to higher temperatures, more frequent droughts and other extreme weather events.
As senior editor for NPR's California Newsroom, two-time Peabody Award-winning journalist Aaron Glantz has partnered with America's leading universities -- including Harvard and Stanford -- leveraging big data to pin-point how and where mitigation dollars can be most effectively spent, pointing the way to solutions that ameliorate the worst impacts of climate change.
The result has been hundreds of millions of dollars in targeted wildfire mitigation spending, compensation to fire victims, and strategic improvements to the state's critical infrastructure. In this talk, Glantz shares what he's learned about the power of big data and the change it can help us make in the world.
Renewing the american Dream
We live in an era of economic paradox. The US economy has been growing for nearly a decade, yet millions of Americans feel left behind. The top 1/10 of one percent of Americans now hold more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, inequality that’s not been seen since the Gilded Age in the 1890s. In “Renewing the American Dream,” Aaron Glantz, a two-time Peabody Award winner and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, explains how the economy has been rigged against the middle class and shares bold ideas for how we can renew the promise of shared prosperity. Glantz, who is a senior investigative reporter at Reveal, draws on lessons from his groundbreaking book Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks and Vulture Capitalists Sucked Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream.
Journalism That Changes the World
Aaron Glantz produces journalism with impact. A two-time Peabody Award-winning senior reporter for Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, his work has sparked more than a dozen congressional hearings, the signing of new laws, and criminal probes by the DEA, FBI, Pentagon, and the Federal Trade Commission. Because of his reporting, 500,000 fewer veterans face long waits for benefits while 100,000 fewer veterans are prescribed dangerous opiates by the government. In this talk, Glantz explains how to cut through the noise of the daily news cycle to report and deliver journalism that truly changes the world.
Books
Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream
A shocking, heart-wrenching investigation into America’s housing crisis and the modern-day robber barons who are making a fortune off the backs of the disenfranchised working and middle class.
Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations
Winter Soldier makes us feel the pain and despair endured by those who serve in a military stretched to the breaking point by stop-loss policies, multiple combat tours, and a war where the goals and the enemies keep shifting.
The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle against America's Veterans
The War Comes Home is the first book to systematically document the U.S. government's neglect of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
How America Lost Iraq
A reporter in Iraq shows how the U.S. squandered its early victories and goodwill among the Iraqi public and allowed the newly freed society to descend into violence and chaos.