Cheryl Whitlow Thompson

Cheryl W. Thompson is an investigative reporter for The Washington Post and was part of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Since coming to The Post in 1997, she has covered the Justice Department, specifically immigration issues and the Drug Enforcement Administration. She also covered the administration of the D.C. police department, including the agency's handling of homicide investigations, which led to a four-part series that prompted local leaders to implement numerous reforms. The articles won several local, state and national awards, including one from the National Association of Black Journalists. Her three-part series last year on the lack of oversight of physicians by state medical boards prompted changes by D.C. officials.

Prior to coming to The Post, Ms. Thompson was an investigative reporter for the Kansas City Star, where she broke stories on how the University of Kansas Medical Center performed no heart transplants for 10 months but continued to accept patients, place them on the waiting list and bill them. The articles won more than a dozen state and national awards, prompted the program's closure, led to an investigation by the state legislature and forced several of the medical center's top administrators to resign.

Ms. Thompson also has worked at the Daily News of Los Angeles and the Chicago Tribune. A Chicago native, Ms. Thompson has a bachelor's degree in speech communication and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an adjunct instructor at Georgetown University.