Jacqueline Charles is a distinguished, multilingual journalist known for her in-depth coverage of Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of Haiti’s devastating January 12, 2010, earthquake and is an Emmy Award winner.

Charles has reported on Haiti for more than two decades for the Miami Herald. Her reporting and analysis of man-made and natural disasters have highlighted the complexities of Haiti, a French- and Creole-speaking nation, and its growing diaspora, as well as broader issues affecting Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly the English-speaking Caribbean.

Her work has appeared in major publications, including National Geographic, and has been recognized by the Caribbean Court of Justice Academy for Law’s Pioneering Caribbean Women Jurists. Her contributions to the Miami Herald’s post-earthquake documentary, Nou Bouke, meaning “We’re Fed Up” in Haitian Creole, earned a regional Emmy Award. The documentary was broadcast in 70 percent of PBS’s national markets.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has described Charles as “Haiti’s ambassador to the world.” She is a sought-after speaker on Haiti, Haitian immigrant communities throughout the region, and the importance of accurate representation and diversity in journalism.

Charles has received numerous awards and honors, including the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for coverage of the Americas, and the 2024 Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for Courage in Journalism from Colby College, which recognized her decades-long reporting on Haiti and the Caribbean, including coverage of earthquakes, hurricanes, and the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.

In 2023, Charles received the International Center for Journalists’ Excellence in International Reporting Award for her longstanding international reporting. She also received an Overseas Press Club of America award for leading the Miami Herald’s investigation into the plot surrounding President Moïse’s assassination.

In 2022, Charles was inducted into the North Carolina Media & Journalism Hall of Fame. That same year, she was named the National Association of Black Journalists’ Journalist of the Year for the second time in eleven years, becoming the only journalist to receive the award twice. Her first Journalist of the Year award was presented in 2011 for her coverage of Haiti’s devastating earthquake the previous year.

Other honors include the 2022 NABJ South Florida Diversity Award for her reporting on Haiti’s ongoing humanitarian and gang crisis; the prestigious 2019 AACR June L. Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism for her multipart series “Cancer in Haiti”; recognition in 2017 for her contributions to the Miami Herald’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Panama Papers coverage; awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the French-American Foundation for a 2016 series on Haitian migration; and a Distinguished Alumna Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2015. Charles has also been recognized on the Haitian Roundtable’s 1804 List of Haitian-American Changemakers and Ones to Watch.

Born in the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British Overseas Territory, Charles spent her early childhood on South Caicos before emigrating to the United States and settling in Miami’s predominantly Black Overtown neighborhood. Her journalism career began at age fourteen as an intern at the Miami Herald.

Charles has written extensively about U.S. immigration policy and its effects on Haitian migrant communities, drawing on her own connections to Haiti and her experience as an immigrant. She has also reported on education, Florida politics, and county government.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. in Journalism, Charles currently serves on the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media’s Board of Advisers. She is a founding member of the Carolina Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists’ student chapter, a former editor of Carolina’s Black Ink student magazine, a past president and scholarship chair of the South Florida Black Journalists Association, and a former assistant director of the University of Miami/Dow Jones High School Journalism Workshop.

Charles has been featured on National Public Radio, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, and Sunday morning public affairs programs, including This Week in South Florida with Michael Putney and Facing South Florida with Jim DeFede on CBS4, among others.

Charles was an event speaker at the Dialogue.