Caitlin Dickerson

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Peabody Award, and Edward R. Murrow Award, Caitlin Dickerson engages audiences on the power of journalism, telling stories of remarkable resilience and hope from around the world.

From Ukraine to Romania to Guatemala, Caitlin Dickerson has spent years covering refugees and other humanitarian crises for some of the nation’s foremost news outlets. On stage, she dispels common myths about the forcibly displaced, and breaks down the seemingly complex forces that influence their life trajectories—from policy, to rhetoric and public sentiment.

Dickerson conveys the human stories behind the growing global refugee crisis. Her audiences walk away with a deeper understanding of how war and other forms of insecurity that expel people from their homes exacerbate pre-existing inequality.

The Atlantic staff writer has broken stories that have led policies to be reversed and lives to change. For a 2024 cover story, she crossed one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world, The Darien Gap, to portray what people were willing to risk to reach safety and stability. She won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism for her September 2022 cover story, We Need to Take Away Children. Previously, Dickerson won Peabody and Edward R. Murrow awards for her investigative reporting for NPR. As a reporter for The New York Times, she wrote frequent front page stories revealing government policies and practices that put vulnerable communities at further risk.