Ailsa Chang
Ailsa Chang is an award-winning journalist who hosts All Things Considered along with Ari Shapiro, Audie Cornish, and Mary Louise Kelly. She landed in public radio after practicing law for a few years.
Chang is a former Planet Money correspondent, where she got to geek out on the law while covering the underground asylum industry in the largest Chinatown in America, privacy rights in the cell phone age, the government's doomed fight to stop racist trademarks, and the money laundering case federal agents built against one of President Trump's top campaign advisers.
Previously, she was a congressional correspondent with NPR's Washington Desk. She covered battles over healthcare, immigration, gun control, executive branch appointments, and the federal budget.
Chang started out as a radio reporter in 2009, and has since earned a string of national awards for her work. In 2012, she was honored with the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her investigation into the New York City Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" policy and allegations of unlawful marijuana arrests by officers. The series also earned honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists.
She was also the recipient of the Daniel Schorr Journalism Award, a National Headliner Award, and an honor from Investigative Reporters and Editors for her investigation on how Detroit's broken public defender system leaves lawyers with insufficient resources to effectively represent their clients.
In 2011, the New York State Associated Press Broadcasters Association named Chang as the winner of the Art Athens Award for General Excellence in Individual Reporting for radio. In 2015, she won a National Journalism Award from the Asian American Journalists Association for her coverage of Capitol Hill.
Prior to coming to NPR, Chang was an investigative reporter at NPR Member station WNYC from 2009 to 2012 in New York City, focusing on criminal justice and legal affairs. She was a Kroc fellow at NPR from 2008 to 2009, as well as a reporter and producer for NPR Member station KQED in San Francisco.
The former lawyer served as a law clerk to Judge John T. Noonan Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.
Chang graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University where she received her bachelor's degree.
She earned her law degree with distinction from Stanford Law School, where she won the Irving Hellman Jr. Special Award for the best piece written by a student in the Stanford Law Review in 2001.
Chang was also a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University, where she received a master's degree in media law. She also has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.
She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she never got to have a dog. But now she's the proud mama of Mickey Chang, a shih tzu who enjoys slapping high-fives and mingling with senators.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with ACLU attorney Somil Trivedi and Slate reporter Mark Joseph Stern on a lawsuit against South Carolina's redistricting process and when new voting maps will be put in place.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Matt Masterson, of the Stanford Internet Observatory. Masterson and his colleagues have compiled an oral history of the 2020 election from the view of election officials.
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As Hispanic Heritage Month comes to an end, poet Yesika Salgado and Lázaro Lima, a professor at Hunter College, talk about what it means to be Latinx in the United States — and the world — in 2021.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with George Washington University's Andrew Mines on what the suicide blast at a mosque in Afghanistan which killed dozens says about the Taliban's ability to maintain security.
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Former NFL player Jon Vaughn talks with NPR's Ailsa Chang from his sit-in protest outside the University of Michigan president's home after sex abuse allegations emerged about a school doctor.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Mario Cordero, the executive director for the Port of Long Beach, about the bottleneck at ports.
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For migrants traveling north to the U.S.-Mexico border from countries like Chile and Brazil, the trip has become virtually impossible without two things — a smuggler and social media.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with reporter Vicente Calderón about how visa holders, like himself, who can show proof of vaccination will be able to cross the U.S.-Mexico border again.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with reporter Meribah Knight about her investigation into Rutherford County, Tenn., where children were arrested and detained at a higher rate than elsewhere in the state.