Officers & Staff

Officers

Herbert Sandler - Chairman

Mr. Sandler and his wife Marion founded Golden West Financial Corporation in 1963. They were Golden West’s Chief Executive Officers and Chairmen of the Board from 1963 until 2006 when the company was sold to Wachovia Corporation. Under the Sandlers’ leadership, Golden West became the second largest thrift institution in the United States and was considered to be one of the best managed financial institutions in the country by many industry observers. Fortune magazine ranked Golden West as the nation’s most admired mortgage services company, and on seven separate occasions named Golden West America’s most admired savings institution. Morningstar, a leading provider of investment research, named the Sandlers CEOs of the Year in 2004. The Sandlers are currently Presidents of the Sandler Foundation and Chairmen Emeriti of Golden West Financial Corporation.

Paul Steiger - Editor-in-Chief

Paul Steiger is the editor-in-chief, president and chief executive of ProPublica.

Mr. Steiger is also the chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based nonprofit organization founded in 1981 to promote press freedom by working for the rights of journalists world-wide. He is a trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, based in Miami, which supports transformative programs in areas including journalism and community development.

Mr. Steiger began his journalism career in 1966 as a reporter in the San Francisco bureau of The Wall Street Journal. In 1968, he moved to the Los Angeles Times as a staff writer and, in 1971, he transferred to that paper's Washington, D.C., bureau as an economics correspondent. He returned to Los Angeles in 1978 to serve as the Times' business editor. In 1983, Mr. Steiger rejoined the Journal as an assistant managing editor in New York and became deputy managing editor in 1985. He was appointed managing editor in 1991 and served in that role until May 2007. Under his leadership, The Wall Street Journal's reporters and editors won 16 Pulitzer Prizes. He served as editor-at-large of the Journal through year end 2007, when he assumed his present position.

In 2008, Mr. Steiger received the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism from Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. In 2007, he won the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award. In 2005, Mr. Steiger was honored with the "Decade of Excellence" award from the World Leadership Forum in London. Also in 2005, the University of Missouri School of Journalism awarded him a Missouri Honor Medal for distinguished service in journalism. In 2002, Mr. Steiger was selected as the first recipient of the American Society of Newspaper Editors' Leadership Award. The John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA honored him with the 2002 Gerald Loeb Award for lifetime achievement. Also in 2002, he was awarded the Columbia Journalism Award, given to honor a "singular journalistic performance in the public interest," and the highest honor awarded by the Columbia University School of Journalism. He was named a 2001-2002 Poynter Fellow by Yale University. The National Press Foundation awarded him the 2001 George Beveridge Editor of the Year Award. He was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board from 1998 to 2007, serving as chairman in his final year. Mr. Steiger personally won three Gerald Loeb Awards and two John Hancock awards for his economics and business coverage. He is co-author of the book, The '70s Crash and How to Survive It, published in 1970.

Stephen Engelberg - Managing Editor

Stephen Engelberg comes to ProPublica from The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon, where he had been a managing editor since 2002. Before joining The Oregonian, Mr. Engelberg worked for The New York Times for 18 years, including stints in Washington, DC and Warsaw, Poland as well as in New York.

After beginning his career at the Times, he worked as a reporter for the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Virginia and for The Dallas Morning News before returning to the Times to write news and investigative articles on national security matters. After a stint as the Times bureau chief in Warsaw immediately following the collapse of Communism, he resumed his work as an investigative reporter in 1993. Mr. Engelberg shared in two George Polk Awards for reporting: the first, in 1989, for articles on nuclear proliferation; the second, in 1994, for articles on U.S. immigration. A group of articles he co-authored in 1995 on an airplane crash was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

Mr. Engelberg’s work since 1996 has focused largely on the editing of investigative projects. He started the Times's investigative unit in 2000. Projects he supervised at the Times on Mexican corruption (published in 1997) and the rise of Al Qaeda (published beginning in January 2001) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. During his years at The Oregonian, the paper won the Pulitzer for breaking news and was finalist for its investigative work on methamphetamines and charities intended to help the disabled. He is the co-author of Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War (2001).

Richard Tofel - General Manager

Richard Tofel is general manager of ProPublica, with responsibility for all of its non-journalism operations, including communications, legal, finance and budgeting and human resources. He was formerly the assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal and, earlier, an assistant managing editor of the paper, vice president, corporate communications for Dow Jones & Company, and an assistant general counsel of Dow Jones. Most recently, he served as vice president, general counsel and secretary of The Rockefeller Foundation, and earlier as president and chief operating officer of The International Freedom Center, a museum and cultural center that was planned for the World Trade Center site. He is the author of Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism (St. Martin's, 2009); Sounding the Trumpet: The Making of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address (Ivan R. Dee, 2005), Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater, and the New York He Left Behind (Ivan R. Dee, 2004) and A Legend in the Making: The New York Yankees in 1939 (Ivan R. Dee, 2002).

News Staff

Editors: Tom Detzel and Susan White
Senior Reporters: Robin Fields, Jeff Gerth and Dafna Linzer
Reporters: Jake Bernstein, Sheri Fink, Michael Grabell, Christina Jewett, Paul Kiel, Chisun Lee, Abrahm Lustgarten, T. Christian Miller, Joaquin Sapien, Mosi Secret, Marcus Stern and A.C. Thompson
Senior Writer: Eric Umansky
Director of Computer-Assisted Reporting: Jennifer LaFleur
Director of Online Development: Scott Klein
Web Producer: Krista Kjellman
Reporting Assistant: Alexandra Andrews
Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief and the Managing Editor: Fiona Tarazi
Interns: Allison Battey, Tim Bella, Sharona Coutts, Jamie Hodari, Robert Lewis, Ben Protess, Jonathan Sidhu and Jamie Wilson

Administrative Staff

Director of Finance & Operations: Barbara Zinkant
Director of Communications: Mike Webb
Director of Information Technology: Nicholas Lanese
Executive Assistant: Gabriela Monasterio

Internet Media Consultant: Elizabeth Osder