Systems of Secrecy: Journalism, Power and the Policy Gaps that Enable Corruption
Open to everyone!
From the Panama Papers to China Targets, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gerard Ryle has overseen investigations that exposed how the powerful exploit opaque systems across borders — from tax havens and shell companies to international law enforcement mechanisms.
Ryle is one of the most influential investigative journalists working today. As executive director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, he has led the largest reporting collaborations in history, producing work that has toppled heads of state, sparked criminal probes and spurred legislative reforms around the world. A former University of Michigan Knight-Wallace fellow, he brings deep experience at the intersection of accountability journalism, power and systemic failures that enable cross-border corruption.
This talk examines what global investigative journalism reveals about the limits of public policy and regulation when laws fall short, enforcement fails and bad actors innovate faster than the systems meant to stop them.
Speaker Bios:
Gerard Ryle is executive director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. He led the worldwide teams of journalists working on the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and Pandora Papers investigations, the biggest in journalism history. Under his leadership, ICIJ has become one of the best-known journalism brands in the world.
Reporters Without Borders has described Ryle’s work with ICIJ as “the future of investigative journalism worldwide” when naming him as one of “100 information heroes” of worldwide significance.
Before joining as ICIJ’s first non-American director in September 2011, Ryle spent more than 20 years working as an investigative reporter and editor in Australia. His work as a journalist began in his native Ireland. He was later a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan, and in 2013 he accepted an honorary doctorate from the University of Liege, on behalf of ICIJ.
Ambassador Susan D. Page is a professor of practice in international diplomacy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and a professor from practice at the University of Michigan Law School. She has deep expertise in international relations, particularly in Africa. Her senior level roles have included Assistant Secretary General/Special Adviser on Rule of Law, Global Focal Point Review Implementation, Special Representative of the Secretary General (SRSG) to the United Nations Mission for Justice Support to Haiti (MINUJUSTH), first U.S. Ambassador to newly independent South Sudan, U.S. Chargé d’Affaires to the African Union, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, key adviser to the peace process that resolved Africa’s longest-running civil war through international mediation, head of rule of law programs for the UN, and a foreign service regional legal advisor and political officer in East, Central, and Southern Africa.