Ailsa Chang
Ailsa Chang is an award-winning journalist who hosts All Things Considered along with Ari Shapiro, Audie Cornish, and Mary Louise Kelly. She landed in public radio after practicing law for a few years.
Chang is a former Planet Money correspondent, where she got to geek out on the law while covering the underground asylum industry in the largest Chinatown in America, privacy rights in the cell phone age, the government's doomed fight to stop racist trademarks, and the money laundering case federal agents built against one of President Trump's top campaign advisers.
Previously, she was a congressional correspondent with NPR's Washington Desk. She covered battles over healthcare, immigration, gun control, executive branch appointments, and the federal budget.
Chang started out as a radio reporter in 2009, and has since earned a string of national awards for her work. In 2012, she was honored with the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton for her investigation into the New York City Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" policy and allegations of unlawful marijuana arrests by officers. The series also earned honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists.
She was also the recipient of the Daniel Schorr Journalism Award, a National Headliner Award, and an honor from Investigative Reporters and Editors for her investigation on how Detroit's broken public defender system leaves lawyers with insufficient resources to effectively represent their clients.
In 2011, the New York State Associated Press Broadcasters Association named Chang as the winner of the Art Athens Award for General Excellence in Individual Reporting for radio. In 2015, she won a National Journalism Award from the Asian American Journalists Association for her coverage of Capitol Hill.
Prior to coming to NPR, Chang was an investigative reporter at NPR Member station WNYC from 2009 to 2012 in New York City, focusing on criminal justice and legal affairs. She was a Kroc fellow at NPR from 2008 to 2009, as well as a reporter and producer for NPR Member station KQED in San Francisco.
The former lawyer served as a law clerk to Judge John T. Noonan Jr. on the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.
Chang graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University where she received her bachelor's degree.
She earned her law degree with distinction from Stanford Law School, where she won the Irving Hellman Jr. Special Award for the best piece written by a student in the Stanford Law Review in 2001.
Chang was also a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University, where she received a master's degree in media law. She also has a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.
She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she never got to have a dog. But now she's the proud mama of Mickey Chang, a shih tzu who enjoys slapping high-fives and mingling with senators.
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Hurricane Beryl gradually weakens as it continues on its course across the Caribbean, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. This is the earliest category 5 storm in the Atlantic on record.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell about her visit to Sudan and what she saw about the toll the country's civil war has had on children.
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Constitutional law expert Kim Wehle discusses what the Supreme Court's immunity decision means for former President Donald Trump's legal cases.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with soccer writer Dermot Corrigan about the latest action at the men's Euro Cup 2024.
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NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with journalist Stephen Witt about chip-maker Nvidia's rise to become the most valuable company in the world and what it means for the future of AI.
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When Chat GPT came out a year and a half ago, school districts rushed to block the tool amid fears students would use it to cheat. Now, many districts are embracing AI more broadly.
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Psychotherapist Orna Gurlanik, star of the documentary series Couples Therapy, is challenging the idea that couples therapy is a last-ditch effort for people. -
A new set of variants that scientists are calling "FLiRT" is rising. NPR's Ailsa Chang speaks with Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health about what it means for summer.
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As much as we would all love to ignore COVID, a new set of variants that scientists call “FLiRT” is here to remind us that the virus is still with us. -
NPR's Juana Summers talks with economics professor Caitlin Myers, who has been tracking travel distances to abortion facilities, about the impact of Florida's ban on abortion after six weeks.
