Ilyssa Daly is an award-winning investigative reporter who covers criminal justice. She is a former local investigations fellow for The New York Times, where she dug into the unchecked power of sheriffs in a series with Mississippi Today, which was a finalist for the 2024 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. She received her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, where she received honors from the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism and won the Fred M. Hechinger Journalism Education Award for her reporting on HIV preventative peer education programs in prisons throughout New York.