Sarah Gonzalez
Host and Reporter, Planet Money
Sarah Gonzalez is a host and reporter with Planet Money, NPR's award-winning podcast that finds creative, entertaining ways to make sense of the big, complicated forces that move our economy. She joined the team in April 2018.
Before joining Planet Money, Sarah was a reporter with WNYC in New York City, where she dug deep into data and documents to uncover stories of inequality.
Sarah's reporting uncovered that the Department of Homeland Security was apprehending undocumented teens on Long Island, based on flimsy claims that they were affiliated with the MS-13 gang. Dozens have since been released from detention after being held for months.
For her five-part investigation into how New Jersey prosecutes minors, Sarah received the 2017 Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize, awarded to a public media reporter under age 35, and was a finalist for the 2017 Livingston Award for young journalists. Sarah found that teenagers were serving prison sentences that amount to life despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting life sentences for minors. And she uncovered that 90 percent of minors tried as adults in the state were black or Latino. She was part of the WNYC reporting team awarded an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for the podcast, Caught: The Lives of Juvenile Justice.
Sarah has served as a fill-in host for The Takeaway and WNYC's live two-hour call-in news show, The Brian Lehrer Show.
Her investigation into Florida charter schools turning away students with severe disabilities received an Online News Association award for Innovative Investigative Journalism. She has received a national Edward R. Murrow award for Excellence in Innovation, and national awards from Public Radio News Directors Inc., the Society of Professional Journalists and the Education Writers Association for her investigative and feature reporting.
Prior to WNYC, Sarah was an NPR Kroc Fellow in 2010 and was a state education reporter with NPR's StateImpact Florida from 2011-2013.
She graduated from Mills College in Oakland, CA, and grew up on the San Diego-Tijuana, Mexico border.
