Sandrine Rigaud is the Program Director of the Global Investigative Journalism Network. She is an investigative journalist, director and Emmy-winning producer who served as editor-in-chief of Forbidden Stories from 2019 to 2024. In that position, she led international collaborations to continue the work of assassinated or under threat reporters. She coordinated investigations involving up to 100 journalists and 30 media outlets, including Le Monde, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Haaretz, and El País.
Under her leadership, Forbidden Stories produced global investigations such as Pegasus (which revealed the mass abuse of Pegasus spyware), Story Killers (on disinformation-for-hire networks), and The Cartel Project (on organized crime and Mexican cartels). These projects received major honors including George Polk Awards, The European Press Prize, Online Journalism Awards, the RSF Impact Award, IJ4EU Awards, the Maria Moors Cabot Prize, the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize, a DIG Award, and the Simón Bolívar Journalism Award.
She has produced documentaries for PBS Frontline, BBC Storyville, Arte, and France Télévisions, including the Emmy-winning Global Spyware: Exposing Pegasus (2024), Malta: In Daphne’s Name (2021), and Slovakia: The Murdered Fiancés (2021).
Earlier, she directed award-winning documentaries for Cash Investigation, the flagship prime-time investigative program on French public television, focusing on agro-industry, environmental crimes, and human rights abuses.
She teaches investigative journalism at the School of Journalism of Sciences Po Paris and is co-author of Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy (2023), translated into several languages. She previously co-authored a book on the power struggles at the heart of France’s Socialist Party (PS: Coulisses d’un jeu de massacre, 2008).
A Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 2024/2025, she worked on global investigative collaborations, leaked data management, and Artificial Intelligence.