Jacqueline Charles is an award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist who serves as the Miami Herald’s multilingual Caribbean correspondent, covering Haiti and the English-speaking Caribbean. With over two decades of experience reporting on Haiti, she was recognized for her coverage of the 2010 Haitian earthquake and co-produced the Emmy-winning documentary Nou Bouke.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton famously referred to her as “Haiti’s ambassador to the world” in recognition of her outstanding reporting on the country’s recovery. She has also been honored by the Haitian Roundtable’s 1804 List of Haitian-American Changemakers and Ones to Watch.
Charles is a two-time National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Journalist of the Year and the 2024 recipient of the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award. She has also received the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Prize for coverage of the Americas, the 2023 Excellence in International Reporting Award, and the Overseas Press Club of America’s award for her investigation into the assassination of former Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.
Her reporting on the lack of cancer treatment in Haiti earned her the AACR June L. Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism in 2019. She was also recognized for her role in the Miami Herald’s Pulitzer Prize–winning investigation into the Panama Papers.
While Charles is best known for her Haiti coverage, her reporting has extended across the region. She has reported on race relations in Cuba, child trafficking in the Dominican Republic, and Haitian migration in Mexico, Canada, and Chile. Domestically, she has covered issues in Miami, including the Broward County school system and immigration.
Born in the Turks and Caicos Islands and raised in Miami by her Haitian mother and Cuban-American stepfather, Charles has a deeply personal connection to Haiti, the broader Caribbean, and immigration issues. She has reported extensively on U.S. immigration policy and Haitian migration.
Charles began her journalism career at the age of 14 as an intern in the Miami Herald’s Neighbors Northwest bureau. After graduating from college, she returned to the bureau to cover North and Northwest Miami-Dade. She later reported on the Broward County Commission and school system and worked in the Herald’s Tallahassee bureau covering state and local politics.
She holds a B.A. in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she serves on the Board of Advisers of the Hussman School of Journalism and Media. She was inducted into the North Carolina Media & Journalism Hall of Fame in 2022, named NABJ Journalist of the Year for a second time that same year, and recognized with a Distinguished Alumna Award by her alma mater in 2015.
Her work has been featured on major platforms including NPR, BBC, CBC, Al Jazeera, and MSNBC, making her one of the most respected voices in international journalism.
Charles was an event speaker at the Dialogue.
