Emma Schwartz is an award-winning producer and reporter. Since 2012, she’s worked on a dozen FRONTLINE films, delving into a wide range of topics from affordable housing to antibiotic resistance to disaster recovery. Based out of American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop, her recent films include Plastic Wars, which uncovered the industry’s decades long campaign to promote recycling as a way to sell more plastic; Blackout in Puerto Rico, which traced the troubled disaster recovery after Maria; Trump’s Trade War, which looked at the changing relationship between the U.S. and China; and Big Sky, Big Money, which examined the growing influence of dark money in political campaigns.

Schwartz began her career in print journalism focusing on legal affairs at Legal Times and later at U.S. News & World Report. She moved into video and television in 2008 as part of the investigative unit at ABC News and then as a video producer at the Center for Public Integrity, where she was part of a team that documented the little known impacts of toxic air pollution in communities across the country.

Her work has won a number of awards including a News & Documentary Emmy for investigative journalism, the Gerald Loeb award, the Overseas Press Club Morton Frank award and an Investigative Reporters & Editors award.

Schwartz has served as an adjunct journalism lecturer at the University of Maryland and was a recipient of fellowships from the Journalist Law School at Loyola Marymount University and the FAU Scripps Howard Institute on the Environment. She holds a bachelors’ degree from the University of California, Berkeley.