Kathleen Gallagher is a Wisconsin-based non-profit executive who was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Gallagher wrote with Mark Johnson, a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a book based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning series called "One in a Billion: The Story of Nic Volker and the Dawn of Genomic Medicine." Gallagher is now Executive Director of 5 Lakes Institute, a non-profit that promotes technology and innovation. She is also Executive in Residence for Investment Communications at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Education

Gallagher earned her Bachelor's in Journalism from the

University of Wisconsin-Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, th ...

and her MA in English from the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

Professional history

From 1990 to 1993, Gallagher held the role of Communications Consultant at the

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (informally the Chicago Fed) is one of twelve regional Reserve Banks that, along with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, make up the United States' central bank. The Chicago Reserve Bank serves the Sevent ...

and was also a Writing Instructor at the American Institute of Banking in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Following that, she began working as a business reporter for the '' Milwaukee Journal Sentinel''. She left the Journal Sentinel in 2017 to become Executive Director of 5 Lakes Institute (previously called the Milwaukee Institute).

Journalism

While Gallagher worked at the ''Milwaukee Journal Sentinel'', she undertook several investigations. They included: the investigation of a multistate cattle Ponzi scheme operator, travelling by

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

with professional investors to visit oil rigs in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

, and reporting on a firm selling stem cell-derived heart cells to

pharmaceutical companies The pharmaceutical industry discovers, develops, produces, and markets drugs or pharmaceutical drugs for use as medications to be administered to patients (or self-administered), with the aim to cure them, vaccinate them, or alleviate symptoms. ...

. She covered investments, life sciences and other emerging, high-growth industries in the

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

area. In 2011, Gallagher won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting with Mark Johnson, Gary Porter, Lou Saldivar, and Alison Sherwood for their “lucid examination of an epic effort to use genetic technology to save a 4-year-old boy imperiled by a mysterious disease, told with words, graphics, videos and other images.” The title was: ‘One in a Billion: A Boy’s Life, a Medical Mystery.’

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gallagher, Kathleen Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Illinois alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication alumni Journalists from Wisconsin Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism winners