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Mona Chalabi

New America Fellowship

Through reporting and hand-drawn illustrations, Mona Chalabi brings data to life, telling accessible stories about the numbers shaping our future.

Mona Chalabi is a Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist, writer, artist, and producer. Using illustration and animation, Chalabi re-humanizes complex data to help us understand our world and the way we live in it. Drawing on her experience working with datasets at the Bank of England, Transparency International, and the International Organization for Migration, Chalabi is dedicated to making numbers as accessible as possible without compromising on accuracy.

Her writing and illustrations have been featured in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Guardian, where she is currently Data Editor. Her video, audio, and production work has been featured on Netflix, NPR, the BBC, and National Geographic. Her work has earned her a fellowship at the British Science Association, an Emmy nomination, and recognition from the Royal Statistical Society. In recent years, her work has been exhibited at the Tate, the Design Museum, and the House of Illustration. She studied international relations in Paris at Sciences Po and Arabic at the University of Jordan.

As an Emerson Collective Fellow at New America, Mona is writing a book, "The Ten," which will mix narrative and data-driven graphics to create a portrait of inequality in America. The book follows 10 socioeconomically diverse households to illuminate the specific impacts economic disparities have on everyday life, as well as how those disparities have been exacerbated by history and policy.