Elisângela Mendonça

Elisângela “Lili” Mendonça is an award-winning investigative journalist with more than 17 years of experience uncovering stories at the intersection of politics, human rights, environmental issues and corporate accountability. She has exposed systemic corruption, environmental crimes and human rights violations across Latin America and beyond, combining data analysis, field reporting and cross-border collaborations to bring hidden abuses to light and inform public debate. Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro and based in London, she previously led the Forests Newsroom at Climate NGO Global Witness, where she investigated how global finance fuels deforestation and environmental harm, following previous roles at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Dow Jones, The Globe and Mail and others. Her work has been published by multiple international outlets and has helped trigger corporate supply chain changes. It has also been shortlisted or won awards such as Covering Climate Now, the Sigma Awards, Foreign Press Awards and others. A two-time Pulitzer Center Rainforest Investigations Network fellow and an alumna of City, University of London’s MA in International Journalism, she is passionate about the democratic role of journalism and the power of rigorous, public-interest reporting to hold the powerful to account. Trilingual in Portuguese, English and Spanish, she frequently works on collaborative, cross-border investigations and proudly brings a Global Majority perspective to her storytelling.