Ground Truthing

Nicholas Kristof has been a columnist for The New York Times since 2001. Over his career, Kristof has won two Pulitzer Prizes, along with many humanitarian awards. This year, he will receive the Edith C. Macy Award for Distinguished Service at the Westchester Children’s association Spring Benefit. Ahead of our May 21st event honoring Kristof, he sat down with WCA executive director Allison Lake and Project Manager Erica Ayala to chat about his work, various policy issues impacting Westchester County’s children, and the relationship between advocacy and journalism. We discovered we both are in the business of changing minds. Kristof and Lake discuss our societal default to rally behind one spectacular story, while ignoring the decaying infrastructures that create child homelessness and other social and economic issues. The conversation begins and ends with the subheading of a recent Kristof op-ed Overcoming life’s basic truth: Talent is universal, but opportunity is not.