Announcement: Two Freelance Journalists Awarded $100,000 Each for Elevating Stories of Underrepresented Communities in the U.S.

Kavitha Cardoza and Oliver Whang have been named the recipients of the 2026 American Mosaic Journalism Prize®

The Heising-Simons Foundation announced today that freelance journalists Kavitha Cardoza and Oliver Whang are the recipients of the 2026 American Mosaic Journalism Prize®, which includes an unrestricted cash prize of $100,000 for each recipient. This is one of the largest dollar amounts given for a journalism prize in the United States.

“We are living in tortuous times. Finding our way through mazes of misinformation and narratives that all too often erase the struggles of real people can be exhausting and soul depleting. Our American Mosaic Journalism Prize recipients set us on a course towards truth and understanding, shining a light for all to see the tapestry of our connected lives.”

Liz Simons
Heising-Simons Foundation’s Chair of the Board

The Prize is awarded for excellence in long-form, narrative, or deep reporting about underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in the United States. The Prize is based on confidential nominations invited from hundreds of journalism leaders throughout the country, and ultimately selected by a panel of 10 judges including journalists from MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), ProPublica, The Atlantic, and more.

“The American Mosaic Journalism Prize was created to affirm journalism’s highest calling: foundational to an informed and inclusive society, with the power to illuminate lives, communities, and truths that might otherwise go unseen. The Prize exists to honor that promise. Kavitha and Oliver not only exemplify excellence in journalism; they join a growing tradition of recipients whose work strengthens our democracy and reminds us how essential an informed society is to its health.”

Brian Eule
Heising-Simons Foundation’s President and CEO, American Mosaic Journalism Prize Founder

About the 2026 Prize Recipients

Kavitha Cardoza is a Washington, D.C.–based journalist known for deep reporting on children, education, and poverty. Cardoza is widely recognized for seeing education not as a standalone beat, but as inseparable from poverty and inequality. Her work has appeared in NPR, The Hechinger Report, and The Guardian, among other outlets. Cardoza’s international upbringing and cross-cultural education strongly shape both the topics she covers and the way she covers them.

Cardoza holds a master’s in broadcast journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, as well as a master’s from the Manipal Institute of Communication in India. In her early career, Cardoza worked as bureau chief for the NPR affiliate in Springfield, Illinois, and later in Washington, D.C., eventually becoming a special correspondent covering children, education, and poverty. In 2022, Cardoza became a public editor at the Education Writers Association (EWA) and host of the EWA Radio podcast, helping train and support education reporters.

Cardoza has been a keynote speaker and moderator at various national education and poverty conferences, including The Aspen Institute, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, United Way, Committee of Education Funding, and American Institutes of Research.

“My life’s mantra can be summed up by the saying, ‘a society will be judged by how it treats its last, its least and its littlest’- which is why I am so passionate about covering populations that are overlooked and underrepresented. Children and teens often don’t have a voice in matters that affect them, and I am so grateful that this Prize will enable me to continue shedding light on their stories.”

Kavitha Cardoza
2026 American Mosaic Journalism Prize Recipient

Oliver Whang is a Boston-based journalist and writer who has reported on addiction and recovery, economic issues, and public health, often from Appalachia. Whang worked for the New York Times’ Science desk, where he was a reporting fellow, and has written for The New York Times Magazine, The London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and National Geographic Magazine.

In 2019, he interned for National Public Radio’s “Invisibilia,” a radio program and podcast about human behavior. His first article for The New York Times, about two bird medics working in New Delhi, was featured in the 2022 film “All That Breathes.” He has also written about cockfighting in Oklahoma, online labor movements, and artificial intelligence.

Raised in New Jersey, Whang obtained a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Princeton University, and is currently a Ph.D. student in philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is working on a novel.

“Lots of us make sense of the world in a narrative way, but narratives can be distorting: people aren’t just characters in stories or examples to help get your point across. I think that’s been a central tension in my work and career so far. Being a journalist can sometimes feel voyeuristic, and difficult to justify. But I’d like to think my reporting develops a record of what happened that people can look at and feel something about. Some pieces of this record can come from people directly, but my role is to be an outside observer, or witness, who provides a different kind of perspective. And I think that’s important to have.”

Oliver Whang
2026 American Mosaic Journalism Prize Recipient

The American Mosaic Journalism Prize® is supported through the Heising-Simons Foundation, which recognizes and supports journalism as a critical element of healthy and multicultural democracy. For more information about the American Mosaic Journalism Prize® and the Heising-Simons Foundation, visit https://www.hsfoundation.org.

2026 Judges

Rose Arce

Vice President Soledad O’Brien Productions

Katherine Boo

Independent Writer and Editor

Sewell Chan

Senior Fellow
Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy
University of Southern California

Antonia Hylton

Co-Anchor
MSNOW

Dara T. Mathis

Freelance Writer
2024 American Mosaic Journalism Prize Recipient

Kevin Merida

Independent Journalist, Author, Media Leader

Vann R. Newkirk II

Senior Editor
The Atlantic

Lizzie Presser

Reporter
ProPublica

Orion Rummler

LGBTQ+ Reporter
The 19th News

Daniella Zalcman

Photojournalist and Executive Director
Women Photograph

About the Heising-Simons Foundation

The Heising-Simons Foundation is a family foundation based in Los Altos and San Francisco, California. The Foundation works with its many partners to advance sustainable solutions in climate and clean energy, enable groundbreaking research in science, enhance the education of our youngest learners, and support human rights for all people. For more information, visit www.hsfoundation.org.

Follow us on LinkedIn.