Topher Sanders covers race, inequality, and the justice system for ProPublica. In 2019, he was part of a team that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Public Service and won the Peabody and George Polk awards for their coverage of President Trump’s family separation policy. In 2018, he and reporter Ben Conarck received the Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award for race coverage and the Al Nakkula Award for Police Reporting for their multipart investigation “Walking While Black,” which explored how jaywalking citations are disproportionately given to Black pedestrians. His reporting has won a number of other national awards including a NABJ Award, an Online Journalism Award, the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting, and he is a two-time winner of the Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award for coverage of racial intolerance and discrimination.

In 2016, Sanders cofounded the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit working to increase the number of investigative reporters and editors of color. He is a graduate of Tuskegee University and started his journalism career at The Montgomery Advertiser in Montgomery, Alabama.

Topher Sanders served as an External Evaluator for the 2022 Just Tech Fellowship.