Lakeidra Chavis is an investigative reporter with the Invisible Institute. She examines ways in which systemic injustices trickle down to everyday life, often through the lens of race and class.
For more than a decade, Chavis has interrogated deeply nuanced issues within the public health and criminal legal systems. Her most recent reporting focused on police sexual misconduct in a troubled police youth program involving the Boy Scouts of America. Prior to that, she reported on the Chicago Police Department's dragnet approach to gun enforcement and the stark rise in suicides among Black Chicagoans during the pandemic. Her journalism has resulted in policy changes, organizational shakeups, and academic research. Her reporting has won several awards, and she has been a finalist for the Livingston Award for Local Reporting, the Selden Ring Award and the MOLLY National Journalism Prize.
Chavis' work has appeared in The Marshall Project, ProPublica, NBC News, the Guardian, Slate, The Chicago Sun-Times, and The Chicago Tribune. She began her career as a public radio reporter in rural Alaska, where she covered tribal financial mismanagement, coastal erosion, and state government. She came to Chicago by way of WBEZ, which is also the place where she produced her most recent happy story. Click here to hear about a once very, very, pink house on Chicago's West Side. She is a graduate of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.