Joseph Jaafari (Virtual)

Joseph Darius Jaafari (juh-FAR-ee) is the founder and editor in chief of LOOKOUT, the nation's only nonprofit news site dedicated to accountability journalism focused on LGBTQ+ communities. Jaafari is an Arizona native, but left in his late teens to pursue a career in movies—which failed—and ultimately turned into a drive to tell stories of people who were being abused and taken advantage of within American systems. That passion led him to a degree in journalism and filmmaking from York College in Jamaica, Queens, and then a graduate degree in urban reporting from the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.

Jaafari's investigations have been focused on military justice, police, and prisons and published in the New York Times, The Marshall Project, VICE, Rolling Stone Magazine, and Spotlight. His stories were cited by Congress to get laws passed assisting military sexual assault victims, resulted in a Phoenix constable resigning after Jaafari exposed how he fabricated a story around the death of a person he evicted, and his most recent work focused on LGBTQ+ communities has resulted in drafted legislation and widespread protests based on his team's reporting around conversion therapy, services for unhoused populations and gender affirming care. He believes that the most punk thing anyone can do right now is read.