Cheryl L. Reed is the Director of Strategic Communications at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Previously she was the Assistant Director for Publications at the Medical Center and Executive and Managing Editor of the magazine Medicine on the Midway, as well as five other hospital publications. She is a former editorial page editor, columnist, books editor and investigative reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times and previously a staff writer at several others newspapers. Her freelance articles have appeared in U.S. News & World Report, Salon, Mother Jones, Poets & Writers and other publications.

Her stories have changed national and state laws and won numerous awards, including Harvard University’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Investigative Reporters & Editors Award for Investigative Reporting and the Edgar A. Poe Award by the White House Correspondents' Association.

Ms. Reed is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism where she received her dual bachelor’s degrees in newswriting and photojournalism. She earned her master’s degree in journalism from the Ohio State University and is currently working on a master’s of fine arts degree from Northwestern University in Chicago. Ms. Reed has taught writing workshops and has been a visiting professor.

When she is not working, Ms. Reed and her husband, Greg Stricharchuk, a business editor for the Chicago Tribune, split their time between their home on Chicago’s South Side and a farmhouse in Laporte, Indiana, where she writes in a converted barn. She is currently writing a novel set in Chicago during the recent presidential election.