Hi, I’m Hannah Levintova. I’m an award-winning investigative reporter at Mother Jones interested in stories about money and influence, income inequality, and politics. I also hold an MBA from Columbia Business School. (From August 2019 to June 2020, I was on leave from Mother Jones completing the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia’s Journalism and Business Schools.)

Before becoming a journalist, I processed FOIA requests at a federal agency in Washington, DC, where I realized that I like reading government documents a lot more than I like redacting them. Later, I worked at National Public Radio and the Washington Monthly. These days, I’m based out of Mother Jones’ New York City bureau and live in Providence, Rhode Island.

I focus on investigative business reporting, and recently led Mother Jones’ 15-story package on private equity. 

I’ve also broken stories about insider trading allegations against Trump’s commerce secretary, murky offshore companies using the US political system to meddle in international politics, the effects of tax reform, the influence of US evangelicals on Russia’s anti-gay movement, stealth gun lobby tactics, and the juvenile justice system’s treatment of girls. My 2022 series of private equity stories has been honored with several business journalism awards. In 2019, my story on Iowa’s defunding of Planned Parenthood won the Exceptional Merit in Media Award for print journalism. 

I’ve received reporting funding from the International Center for Journalists, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the Tow Foundation. I also regularly conduct FOIA trainings in my newsroom, and have presented on FOIA, investigative reporting, story-pitching, and other topics at several conferences and workshops, including: Investigative Reporters and Editors, Society of Professional Journalists, Princeton University’s Summer Journalism Program, Women Action & the Media, and BinderCon.

I have a B.A. with honors from Brown University, where I was a member of the first class of Sidney Frank Scholars, a full scholarship that transformed my life and career. I grew up in Boston after my family fled the USSR and speak fluent Russian.

(The illo above is by Evan Wolkenstein. Check out his stuff at Style for Dorks.)