Type Investigations is thrilled to announce that Noy Thrupkaew has been selected as the new director of the Ida B. Wells Fellowship program and as a Type Investigations reporting fellow.
In this dual role, Thrupkaew will mentor Type Investigations’s annual cohort of emerging investigative fellows, helping each reporter produce their first substantial investigation, while she continues her own work as an investigative reporter focused on labor and human rights.
Thrupkaew first joined Type Investigations as interim director last summer and quickly became an invaluable part of the team.
“We are incredibly lucky to have Noy in our newsroom,” said Cassi Feldman, executive editor at Type Investigations. “She is a rigorous reporter who brings passion, insight, and dedication to her work.”
An independent journalist, Thrupkaew has researched human trafficking and labor exploitation for the past two decades. In her tenure as an Open Society Fellow, she investigated some of the largest human-trafficking cases in the U.S., and explored ways to develop greater accountability in law-enforcement initiatives against forced prostitution.
She has reported from Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iran, Morocco, and Cuba, writing for outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, National Geographic, The Boston Globe, Radio Netherlands, Reveal Radio, and Marie Claire.
A member of the University of British Columbia’s Hidden Costs of Global Supply Chains project, Thrupkaew has received International Reporting Project, Fund for Investigative Journalism, and Fulbright grants.
Now in its seventh year, the Ida B. Wells Fellowship runs annually and includes a Southern Fellow drawn from a nine-state region in the south. Past fellows have published investigations that help to drive policy change, launch public initiatives, and spark public hearings in addition to winning nationally recognized awards from organizations including the National Association of Black Journalists, the Native American Journalists Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Alumni of the program now hold jobs at the Associated Press, Washington Post, Grist, Indian Country Today, BuzzFeed, and more.
“Every year, the Ida B. Wells fellows bring so much dedication and expertise to their stories,” Thrupkaew said. “I’m honored to be able to support these inspiring reporters, and to be part of a program devoted to making investigative journalism more representative of and accountable to a truly diverse range of communities”
The program was formerly run by Alissa Figueroa, who left Type to continue her development of a documentary film project focused on police reform in Baltimore, Maryland, and take a teaching position at Morgan State University.
Thrupkaew has long played a role in the Ida B. Wells program, helping to review applications and mentoring fellows. Apart from her work at Type, she will also co-teach a class on climate stories this semester to students at the University of Southern California, where she is currently a senior fellow at USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab.