Who is Kavitha Surana, who won the Prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Journalism in the Public Service Category?

ProPublica reporter Kavitha Surana is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize-2025. ProPublica is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in New York City.

Kavitha Surana is one of the young journalists who have been awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious in journalism, for reporting done for ProPublica. ProPublica is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in New York City. Its full-time investigative journalists conduct investigations, and the resulting stories are distributed to news partners for publication or broadcast. Reporters Kavitha Surana Cassandra Jaramillo and Lizzie Presser have been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for ProPublica’s “Life of the Mother” series. This is the eighth Pulitzer for ProPublica.

ProPublica’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting focused on pregnant women who died because doctors delayed necessary care for fear of violating vague “life of the mother” exceptions in states with strict abortion laws. Her team of Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, Cassandra Jaramillo and Stacy Kranitz sheds in-depth light on this sensitive and important issue, garnering widespread attention.

Kavitha Surana's journalistic style is often praised for its in-depth research, human approach and ability to present complex issues clearly and effectively. Her reporting often aims to elevate the voices of marginalized people and highlight social injustice.

From left: Cassandra Jaramillo, Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana, reporters on the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Life of the Mother” series; editor Alexandra Zayas; and Editor-in-Chief Stephen Engelberg. It is the eighth Pulitzer for ProPublica. Credit: ProPublica

The ProPublica team's investigative journalism not only exposed these women's tragedies, but also led to the unanimous passage by the Texas Senate of a bill called the "Life of the Mother Act," which aims to prevent maternal deaths under the state's strict abortion ban.

After the award was announced, Surana said she and her colleagues felt honored and recognized the reason they reported because no one else was examining the consequences of these laws in such depth. She also said they would continue to investigate these cases and what happened in the many states that have banned abortion across the country.

On ProPublica's official website, Surana says, "I have been reporting on changes to reproductive health care access since Roe v. Wade was overturned. I regularly speak with doctors, patients, researchers, community workers and lawmakers to better understand how maternal health care has been affected by abortion restrictions. Learn more about how ProPublica covers maternal health and how to get in touch."

Pulitzer Prize-2025: The New York Times top Winner, Full List of Journalism Winners https://t.co/ajvvLETUcI

— VOiCE OF MEDIA (@voiceofmedia1) May 6, 2025

Kavitha Surana joined ProPublica as a national reporter in 2022. Since then she has investigated the consequences of state abortion restrictions for people facing life-threatening pregnancy complications, including uncovering deaths that could have been prevented, and a rise in maternal sepsis rates in Texas after the state banned abortion. The reporting led to a federal investigation and spurred lawmakers in multiple states to file bills expanding abortion access. She interviewed experts across the country to help create a guide on the medical procedures that could save your life during a pregnancy loss.

Before joining ProPublica, Kavitha Surana reported on housing, law enforcement and health care inequality at the Tampa Bay Times and BuzzFeed News. She was previously a 2018 fellow at ProPublica covering immigration.

Kavitha Surana began her career in international journalism. She interned at the Associated Press in Rome and was a fellow at Foreign Policy magazine. Kavitha can speak Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French and has reported from Italy, Germany, Rwanda, Colombia and Senegal.