Kathryn Hurd (She/Her(s))
Senior Reporter at The Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley@University of California, Berkeley/Investigative Reporting Program
What I can offer as a mentor
Over the past three years, I have mentored graduate student reporters at UC Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program, helping guide investigations from initial concept to publication. My mentorship draws on experience reporting on child welfare, government accountability, addiction treatment, and domestic extremism. I work closely with students on source development, public records reporting, investigative strategy, narrative structure, and reporting on vulnerable populations. My goal is to help emerging reporters build confidence, navigate complex reporting challenges, and produce rigorous, impactful journalism.
Biography
Kathryn Hurd is a senior reporter at the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley, where she leads and contributes to long-form investigations examining some of the nation's most consequential and opaque institutions. Over the past five years, her reporting has spanned the child welfare system, addiction treatment and recovery programs, government accountability, public corruption, and the rise of domestic extremism in the United States.
Her work has appeared in ProPublica, the Los Angeles Times, PBS Frontline, KQED, and the San Francisco Examiner. She has reported on subjects ranging from failures within child protective services and the treatment of vulnerable youth to abuses in the rehabilitation industry and the networks that fueled the events surrounding January 6.
In 2022, Hurd was part of the George Polk Award–winning team behind the PBS Frontline documentary American Insurrection, an investigation into the growth of extremist movements in America. The film was also nominated for a Peabody Award and a News & Documentary Emmy Award.
At Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program, she helps produce accountability-driven journalism while mentoring graduate student reporters and editors. Her work combines public records investigations, data reporting, source development, and narrative storytelling to illuminate how powerful institutions shape—and sometimes fail—the lives of the people they serve.
Hurd received her master's degree in Investigative Reporting from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in 2021. Since joining the Investigative Reporting Program, she has progressed from student reporter to senior reporter, helping lead complex investigations while training the next generation of investigative journalists.
She is currently at work on her next investigation.