Kate Woodsome
Photo by Marvin Joseph
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kate Woodsome studies the relationship between mental health and democracy. As a writer, filmmaker and reformer, she is exposing the social and political forces — and narratives — that keep people isolated and unwell. Why? Because she believes an educated, empathetic electorate can create the conditions for collective wellbeing.
Woodsome’s work has three facets. She writes Invisible Threads, a rare weekly newsletter dedicated to uncovering the ties between the health of our minds and our body politic.
She is a non-resident Fellow with Georgetown University’s research and design unit, The Red House. There, she focuses on multidisciplinary efforts to transform cycles of intergenerational trauma into cycles intergenerational wellbeing. And finally, Woodsome is a narrative reformer, developing trauma-informed workshops to equip storytellers and the people they feature with resilience-building tools to leave them feeling safer and more empowered than exploited and depleted.
Previously with The Washington Post, Woodsome was part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. She pioneered a mental health column and managed a short documentary film unit, too. As an editor, journalist and producer, Woodsome also has been honored with the Ben Bradlee Award for Courage in Journalism, an Edward R. Murrow Award and honors from the White House News Photographers Association.
She left The Post in Dec. 2023, no longer willing to normalize the trauma, burnout and moral injury that pervades the industry. This clarifies efforts Woodsome has pursued for more than two decades — from reporting on an authoritarian regime in post-genocide Cambodia, to the decline of democracy in Hong Kong, to the 2021 U.S. insurrection.