Liza Gross is an award-winning journalist, investigative reporter and author who’s long written about topics ranging from cougars and autism to climate change and psychedelic medicine. Now, as a staff reporter for Inside Climate News, she specializes in conservation, environmental health and justice, and agricultural and oil and gas issues through a climate lens. Her stories reflect her wide-ranging interests and curiosity about the natural world, power imbalances, and the misuse and abuse of science for private gain.
Liza spent her formative years at Wine Spectator, working on the magazine and editing books and guides. She served as copy chief at Parenting, before moving to Sierra, where she specialized in toxics and environmental health and produced a special report on environmental links to breast cancer. There, she discovered a latent love of science, which led her to San Francisco’s Exploratorium, where as science writer she embraced founding director Frank Oppenheimer’s hope that giving people the tools to understand science would help them make the world a better place for future generations. His vision continues to inspire her work as an investigative reporter seeking to illuminate some of Earth’s most pressing problems.
Before joining Inside Climate News, she worked as magazine editor at the open-access journal PLOS Biology and reported for Food and Environment Reporting Network. Her stories appeared in diverse outlets, including The Intercept, The Nation, The Verge, Smithsonian, Ensia, New York Times, Discover, Science Insider, Slate, NPR, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, National Geographic’s News Watch, High Country News, East Bay Express, Scientific American, Sierra, Tikkun and Wine Spectator.
Liza has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a 2023 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media, the 2022 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award, Science Reporting Silver Award, 2019 SPJ NorCal Excellence in Journalism Award for Explanatory Journalism; 2019 Association of Food Journalists Award 3rd place; The Best of Nonprofit News 2018 — Money, Power & Influence; 2016 AHCJ Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, Investigative Reporting, Small Market; 2016 California Civic Data Coalition NICAR Scholarship; 2016 Journalist Fellowship, North American Congress of Conservation Biology; 2015 AHCJ Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, Investigative Reporting, Small Market; 2015-2016 California Health Data Journalism Fellow; 2015 ASJA Honorable Mention, Reporting on a Significant Topic; 2014 ASJA Outstanding Article Award; 2014 SPJ NorCal, Excellence in Journalism Award; 2013 NYU Reporting Award; 2013 California Endowment National Health Journalism Dennis Hunt Fellowship; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Science Journalism Fellowship; Symposium for Professional Wine Writers, Meadowood Napa Valley, Fellowship.
She lives on the unceded land of the Lisjan Ohlone people, one of scores of California tribes denied recognition by the U.S. government.
Email: lizagross@gmail.com. Find Liza on Muck Rack, Reporting on Health, Twitter
Memberships, Trainings
*New England Center for Investigative Reporting
*Society of Environmental Journalists
*Investigative Reporters and Editors
*National Association of Science Writers
*Northern California Science Writers Association
In 2017, Liza won an NASW Peggy Girshman Idea Grant to produce The Science Writers’ Investigative Reporting Handbook, which is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.