A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, Charles has been a frequent contributor to This American Life, NPR, The Colbert Report, PBS’s NewsHour, and Frontline.

Charles led the team that won the 2013 Pulitzer prize in explanatory journalism for “The iEconomy,” a series that examined the global economy through the lens of Apple. That series included examinations of such topics as the factories in China where iPhones and iPads are manufactured.

Charles has also received The George Polk award, the Gerald Loeb award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Medal, the Scripps Howard National Journalism award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and other honors.

While a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, Charles reported from Iraq about American military operations.

Before becoming a full-time journalist in 2003, Charles worked as an analyst for American Property Global Partners, a private equity firm and co-founded SWPA Education Management Group, L.L.C., which developed education programs for medically underserved areas.

He was also, for one terrifying day in 1999, a bike messenger in San Francisco.

Charles lives in Santa Cruz with his wife and two children.