Cheryl Phillips is the founder and director of Big Local News at Stanford University. Big Local News collects, standardizes and shares public data, builds tools, and partners with local and national newsrooms to help journalists pursue data-driven accountability reporting. The program has helped newsrooms work with public data on issues ranging from police accountability and education to COVID-19, the 2020 Census and government transparency.
Phillips has taught journalism at Stanford since 2014 and is also co-founder of the Stanford Open Policing Project and a founding member of the California Civic Data Coalition. Before Stanford, she worked at The Seattle Times for 12 years in reporting and editing roles with the investigations team and across the newsroom, including work on Pulitzer Prize-winning breaking news coverage. She previously worked at USA Today and newspapers in Michigan, Montana and Texas, served for 10 years on the board of Investigative Reporters and Editors, and is a former IRE board president.