David Eads
- Github
- Resume
I'm a journalist, strategist, data analyst, and full-stack software engineer with a passion for building data-driven products that help people navigate the world around them. I run the data team at The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom that covers the US criminal justice system.
My projects and career have followed an electic path, with digital media and software development as the thread that binds it together. I built one of the first high school newspaper websites in the late 1990s (for my efforts, I got a "B"), as well as a proto-social platform for young people called E-Teen. I moved to Chicago and got a degree in physics, but my interests led me to the housing projects, where I helped start The Invisible Institute. Later in the 2000s, I was a founder and longtime leader of FreeGeek Chicago, was part of the team that built the first vocalo.org for WBEZ Chicago, and worked at FermiLab on network monitoring interfaces.
In recent years, I've mostly focused on journalism at The Chicago Tribune, NPR, ProPublica, Chicago Reporter, The Marshall Project, and Quinto Elemento Lab. My work been a crucial part of several award-winning projects, including the Premio Gabo and COLPIN award for coverage of clandestine mass graves in Mexico, the Goldsmith award a sweeping look at Mississippi's prisons, and the Pultizer Prize for an investigation of police dog bites around the US.