Bloomberg adds five to its investigations team

Bloomberg senior executive editor Otis Bilodeau and executive editor Robert Blau sent the following memo to Bloomberg’s investigations team on Tuesday:

To all on the Investigations Team,

Bob and I are excited to tell you about five outstanding new colleagues joining our group.

Jessica Brice, a senior editor for Latin American commodities and energy stories, joins the team as a senior investigative reporter. Jessica, who came to Bloomberg News as a “late night general news reporter” in 2004, had a successful fellowship with our team last year that helped her report powerful stories on the Amazon Rainforest under threat in Bolsonaro’s Brazil and how the beef industry is fueling the Amazon’s destruction. Jessica will continue to be based in Sao Paulo. Her new duties are effective immediately.

Anthony Cormier joins from BuzzFeed News, where he was a senior investigative reporter covering the Trump White House, the CIA, and global financial institutions. Before joining BuzzFeed in 2017, he spent more than a decade as a journalist in Florida. In 2016, he won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting following a series of stories on the state’s deadly psychiatric hospitals. In 2021, he led a team of journalists who were named as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for the FinCEN Files — stories that revealed how major banks knowingly facilitated transactions for terror groups, narcotraffickers, and other financial criminals. Anthony will be a senior investigative reporter based in New York. His first day is today, July 5.

Jason Leopold, also from BuzzFeed News, has twice been a Pulitzer finalist in international reporting. In 2021, he was also one of the lead reporters on the massive FinCEN Files reporting project. In 2018, he was part of a team that investigated a series of suspicious deaths in the UK and US linked to the Kremlin. Leopold’s award-winning Freedom of Information Act work has been profiled by dozens of radio, television, and print outlets, and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research organization based at Syracuse University, has identified him as “the most active individual FOIA litigator in the United States today.” We are thrilled that Jason will be a resource and guide for public records reporting across our global newsroom. He’ll be a senior investigative reporter based in Los Angeles. His first day is today.

Kendall Taggart broke stories about the NYPD’s secret misconduct files, judges who abused their power, and insurance companies that falsely accused their own customers of crimes. Most recently, her work at BuzzFeed exposed abuse and neglect in homes for people with disabilities owned by the private equity giant KKR. Her reporting immediately prompted several US senators to launch an investigation. She’s been a co-finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, winner of the Barlett & Steele Award for investigative business journalism, and a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award. She’s also taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She’ll be a senior investigative reporter based in San Francisco. Her first day will be Sept. 6.

Alex Campbell was an investigations editor for BuzzFeed whose team exposed abuses all over the world — inside care homes in Britain, banks in Germany and Cyprus, guardianship courts in Florida and Wyoming, and conservation parks in Nepal and Cameroon. He shepherded a Pulitzer-winning series documenting the scale of China’s mass detention campaign in Xinjiang. He previously worked as an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and for the Indianapolis Star, publishing stories that led to changes in Maryland’s rape law and helped free two women from prison. He is a proud south Londoner — or at least as proud as anyone with an American accent is allowed to be — and the father of a very extroverted one year-old. He’ll be a team leader based in London, and his first day will be Sept. 6.

These moves represent a remarkable addition of talent to an extraordinary team that produces a lot of great work. Please join us in welcoming our new colleagues.

Best,

Otis and Bob