2022
Education & Thought Leadership
Emma Gilchrist headshot
Clean50 Award Logo

Emma Gilchrist

Co-founder, Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief, The Narwhal
Canada needs accurate and unbiased environmental journalism more than ever. Carol and Emma co-founded The Narwhal in 2018 in response to a crisis in Canadian environmental journalism that had seen the elimination of nearly all the environmental reporters at major news outlets. Leveraging tireless, Watergate-levels of investigative journalism that dishes out freedom-of-information requests like Halloween candy, the team regularly conducts deep, on-the-ground research that exposes misbehaviour and corruption by governments and companies. In 2021, The Narwhal received the second highest number of nominations in the Canadian Association of Journalists' awards, second only to CBC. The Narwhal has seen almost immediate success — their readership has increased from 2.4 million in 2019 to over 4 million in 2020, and they currently count over 3500 monthly paid members. In the fall of 2021, they're launching a three-person Ontario bureau, which will bring their staff team up to a total of 16.