Laurie Garrett

During her PhD studies, Laurie Garrett started reporting on science news at radio station KPFA, winning the 1977 George Foster Peabody Award. She went overseas, living and working in southern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, freelance reporting for Pacifica Radio, Pacific News Service, BBC Radio, Reuters, Associated Press, and others. In 1980, she joined National Public Radio, working as the network’s science correspondent. During her NPR years, Garrett received outstanding achievement awards from the National Press Club, San Francisco Media Alliance and World Hunger Alliance. In 1988, Garrett left NPR to join the science and foreign desks of Newsday. Her Newsday work earned numerous awards, including the Award of Excellence from the National Association of Black Journalists (1989); Deadline Club of New York: Best Beat Reporter (1993); First Place from the Society of Silurians (1994); Bob Considine Award of the Overseas Press Club of America (1995); and George C. Polk Award (1997, 2000). Garrett received the Pulitzer in 1996 for her coverage of the 1995 Ebola epidemic in Kikwit, Zaire. She has also written for many publications, including Foreign Affairs, Esquire, Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and Current Issues in Public Health. Among her most recent awards for her global health work executed while at the Council on Foreign Relations are the 2014 NYU School of Medicine “Outstanding Contributions to Global Health,” and the 2015 Internationalism Award from the American Women for International Understanding. Laurie Garrett has been awarded four honorary PhDs from Wesleyan University (Illinois), the University of Massachusetts (Lowell), Georgetown University, and the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine.