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 Chelsea Rivera, who is sheltering with her parents in Sarasota, Fla., which is about 50 miles north of where the center of Hurricane Ian hit.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Desire La-Marr Murphy, founder and CEO of Murphy's Giving Market in the Philly area, about Biden's goal for ending hunger in America.
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Yellen says the Biden administration is emphasizing action on climate change to make a more resilient American economy. What does that look like for the future of infrastructure and spending? -
NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Meghan Bodette, the director of research at the Kurdish Peace Institute, about the protests in the Kurdish region in Iran following the death of a young woman last week.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Jorge Castillo from The LA Times about Albert Pujols hitting 700 career home runs and its significance to the Latino community.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang chats with Brandon Kyle Goodman about their new book You Gotta Be You: How to Embrace This Messy Life and Step Into Who You Really Are.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about the Biden Administration's plans to help the economy absorb supply shocks, which economists think will become more frequent.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Jim Kossin of the Climate Service about the link between climate change and more intense hurricane seasons.
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El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele has struck fear into the hearts of human rights activists in the country by installing martial law and imprisoning over 50,000 people.
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In 1975, photographer Penny Wolin checked into the St. Francis Hotel in Hollywood — a place of dreamers and misfits who called the residential hotel home. There, the myth of Hollywood became real.
