Robert Samuels

Robert Samuels (BSJ06) was inducted into Medill’s Hall of Achievement in 2026.

Samuels is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a national enterprise reporter for The Washington Post.

Samuels won the Pulitzer for General Nonfiction in 2023 for his co-authored book, “His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice.” The book explored how systematic racism impacted the life and death of George Floyd. The book also was a Pulitzer finalist in the biography category. Additionally, the book won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize.

For his work with The Washington Post, Samuels travels the country to cover how politics and policy are affecting everyday Americans. Furthermore, every four years he serves as the Post’s chief figure skating analyst.

He was named as a finalist for the Toner Prize for National Political Reporting for a series of profiles on presidential candidates. He was also named as a finalist for the Livingston Award in Local Reporting from his investigation into the District of Columbia’s affordable housing strategy. He has been on reporting teams that have won Polk, Peabody and NABJ awards.

Previously, he worked as a staff writer at the Miami Herald and the New Yorker. He also taught classes at Georgetown and Wake Forest. He is a former director of the Press Pass Mentors program, where top journalists are paired with students in under-resourced D.C. schools as writing coaches.

At Northwestern, he is the first student to have served as both the editor-in-chief of BlackBoard magazine and the Daily Northwestern.