Charles Lewis is a distinguished journalist in residence and the founding executive editor of the new Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication, in Washington, D.C.

A national investigative journalist for nearly 30 years, Lewis has founded or co-founded four nonprofit enterprises in Washington, including the Center for Public Integrity. He left a successful career as an investigative producer for ABC News and the CBS News program 60 Minutes and began the Center, which under his leadership published roughly 300 investigative reports, including 14 books, from 1989 through 2004, honoured more than 30 times by national journalism organizations. In late 1997, he began the Center’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the world’s first working network of 100 premier reporters in 50 countries producing content across borders.

In 2003, the Center posted all of the known U.S. war contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Windfalls of War first identified that Halliburton had received the most money from those contracts, and it won the first George Polk Award for Internet Reporting. The principal author of five Center books, including national bestseller The Buying of the President 2004, Lewis was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998 and received the PEN USA First Amendment award in 2004.