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Kat Stafford is the Global Race and Justice Editor at Reuters, where she leads newsroom efforts to ensure inclusive, equitable coverage across the global news file. In this role, she oversees a team of reporters and collaborates with editors across text and visuals to embed a diversity of perspectives into the reporting of politics, economics, society, and financial markets. Stafford helps shape Reuters’ global journalism strategy with a focus on race, identity, and justice, ensuring representation of historically underrepresented communities. Since joining Reuters in 2023, Stafford has led and supported major U.S. stories and globally, she works with editors and correspondents to elevate underreported perspectives and stories.

Stafford was previously a national investigative writer and global investigations correspondent at The Associated Press, where her reporting uncovered how structural racism drives inequities across American life—including in government, healthcare, environmental justice, and politics. She first joined AP in 2020 as a national race and ethnicity writer, just as the COVID-19 pandemic erupted. Her role quickly expanded to cover the virus's disproportionate impact on communities of color, the racial justice uprisings following George Floyd’s murder, and the intersection of race and the 2020 presidential election.

Before AP, Stafford was an investigative reporter at the Detroit Free Press, where her work prompted legislative reforms, policy changes, and state and federal investigations.

Stafford’s journalism journey began in her childhood on Detroit’s east side, where her father served as the neighborhood block club president. The community produced a monthly newsletter to fill the gaps left by traditional media. That early exposure to community-driven reporting sparked her passion for journalism and laid the foundation for her mission-driven career spotlighting under-resourced and historically excluded Black communities and other communities of color.

She is a 2021–22 University of Michigan Knight-Wallace Fellow, where she created an award-winning project exploring how systemic health inequities shape Black Americans' lives—from birth to death.

Stafford has held several leadership positions in journalism organizations. She currently serves as a member of USC's Center for Health Journalism's advisory board and is a board member of the National Association of Black Journalists' Investigative Task Force. Stafford is the former vice president of the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Board of Directors and past chair of IRE’s Member Services Committee. She also served as deputy chair of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Print Task Force and vice president of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Detroit chapter, where she chaired the FOIA committee.

She is a sought-after speaker and trainer on issues of representation, structural inequity, and race. Stafford regularly leads training sessions on equitable sourcing, investigative reporting, and journalism for organizations including the Ida B. Wells Society, Poynter Institute, Maynard Institute, and various colleges and universities. Internationally, she has participated in global journalism events, including the Global Investigative Journalism Network and the International Center for Journalists.

Her work has received numerous accolades. In 2024, Stafford received the Spirit of Diversity Award from Wayne State University’s Journalism Institute for Media Diversity for her efforts to elevate journalists of color and reimagine how marginalized communities are represented in global news. In 2023, she was honored with the National Press Club Journalism Institute’s Neil and Susan Sheehan Award for Investigative Journalism. She was a finalist for the 2021 McElheny Award in science journalism from MIT and received the 2019 First Amendment Award from Michigan’s Associated Press Media Editors.

Stafford was named a 2019 Ida B. Wells Investigative Fellow, and in 2017, she received the Young Journalist of the Year Award from the Detroit chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. 

Her reporting and commentary have been featured on national and global television and radio platforms, and she regularly moderates panels and delivers speeches on race, equity, and the power of journalism.