Yael Grauer

I am a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative tech reporter covering privacy and security, digital freedom, hacking, and mass surveillance. I’ve also managed cybersecurity tools and programs that reached hundreds of thousands of users. I’m currently exploring roles at mission-driven tech, media, and digital rights organizations where rigorous research and real-world impact go hand in hand. (If you’re a hiring manager, note that I’m open to roles in journalism, program management, cybersecurity education, trust & safety, privacy policy, and OSINT.)

I’ve freelanced for over a decade, with bylines at the Associated Press, Atlantic, Ars Technica, Insider, Slate, The Intercept, The Verge, OneZero, Popular Science, Vice, Wirecutter, WIRED, and other publications. I collaborated with the Associated Press on a package that won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting and the Overseas Press Club of America’s Malcolm Forbes and Morton Frank Award for best international business news reporting. Additionally, I collaborated on projects that won student awards from Investigative Reporters & Editors, Society of Professional Journalists, Society for Advancing Business Editors and Writers, and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights.

I spent six years at Consumer Reports, most recently as a program manager focused on cybersecurity research. I managed Security Planner, a free guide to staying safer online, overseeing a full rebuild that earned backlinks from CISA, Apple, and Amnesty International and drove a 53% increase in conversions. I also wrote white papers and research reports on topics including memory safety, VPN marketing, consumer scams, and online abuse, and led collaborative projects with partners including Tall Poppy, PEN America, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I am a member of the Lockdown Systems collective, helping empower people to protect themselves from unwanted surveillance, claw back their data from big tech, and choose what they reveal to the world. I also run a data broker opt-out list, helping people remove their home address and other personal data from people search sites.

I am a regular public speaker at conferences, on panels, and on podcasts, where I share insights about digital security, online privacy, memory safety, source protection, and more.

I’m a Certified Information Privacy Professional. I’ve completed Hostile Environment and First Aid Training with the International Women’s Media Foundation and the Journalism and Women Symposium, the Source Protection Programme by Freedom of the Press Foundation and Centre for Investigative Journalism, and Ford Foundation’s Cybersecurity Academy and its Physical Safety School. I’m currently a Safety Ambassador Fellow at the International Women’s Media Foundation.

I hold an undergraduate degree in Social Sciences from Shimer College and a master’s degree in journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. I am a member of Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Internet Press Guild.

I live in Phoenix with my husband and our adorable rescue chiweenie. In my spare time, I enjoy hiking, cooking and baking, playing acoustic guitar, playing puzzle games, reading academic research, and drinking fancy cocktails, probably not in that order.