Alec Klein is a consultant, bestselling author and award-winning investigative journalist formerly of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. His groundbreaking investigations have uncovered a wide array of wrongdoing, leading to significant reforms, congressional hearings, changes in federal law, criminal convictions and more than half a billion dollars in government fines. His investigations have also helped set free many prisoners across the nation who were wrongfully convicted of murder and falsely accused of other crimes. Alec’s work has helped free several people who were unjustly sentenced to life in prison. And he has helped dozens of excessively sentenced prisoners gain their freedom and regain their lives through parole, commutations and pardons.

Alec’s first book, Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner, was a national bestseller published by Simon & Schuster. The book was translated into Japanese and Chinese, excerpted in Great Britain and selected as one of the “Best Business Books” by Library Journal and Strategy + Business.

His second book of nonfiction, A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America’s Best High Schools, also published by Simon & Schuster, was named “One of the Best Education Books of the Year” by the American School Board Journal and translated into Chinese, where it went through several printings.

His memoir, Aftermath: When It Felt Like Life Was Over, published by Republic Book Publishers, is a story about faith, forgiveness and redemption.

In 2018, Alec founded Matthew 56 Consulting, LLC, a media firm with clients nationwide and abroad, and Matthew 56 Investigations, LLC, which has successfully probed cases across the country.

As a consultant, Alec has worked with clients throughout the world, including members of Congress, national nonprofits, industry leaders and many others. Alec helped to create and launch an Oklahoma nonprofit that assists wrongfully convicted and excessively sentenced prisoners so that they can regain their freedom. He devised a system that has helped free dozens of women through parole and commutation, including some who had been sentenced to life in prison. He also helped to create a drug treatment program at a nonprofit in New York to give people a second chance at employment after failing drug screens.

Alec continues to work on a pro bono basis to help indigent prisoners who were wrongfully convicted or excessively sentenced regain their freedom.

A consultant on wide-ranging projects, Alec has helped clients throughout the world with media strategy and book projects, and he has also written many articles for local and national publications, earning a number of journalism awards. Over the past several years, Alec has also given many talks across the nation and abroad about his work, while also being interviewed widely on television and radio, online and in print.

In 2021, Alec cofounded the Wyoming Truth, which grew rapidly to become an award-winning nonprofit daily news operation covering the state of Wyoming. Under his leadership as president, the Wyoming Truth published online and in print, ran a summer internship program and became one of the largest news outlets in the state. During his tenure, from August 2021 to January 2024, the Wyoming Truth was honored for virtually every aspect of its journalism, winning awards for long-form feature writing, general reporting, social justice reporting, editorials, political news, political features, education features, front page design, editorial cartoons and feature photography. Writing for the Wyoming Truth, Alec was honored in 2023 by the Society of Professional Journalists for his long-form feature writing, social justice reporting and editorial writing. Alec also was honored in 2023 by the National Newspaper Association Foundation for best investigative or in-depth story or series for articles he wrote about “Overreach in Wyoming’s Criminal Justice System.” He was also honored by the National Newspaper Association Foundation for his non-profile feature story and editorial writing. The Wyoming Truth also won a major grant from Google.

In 2020, Alec created and hosted the podcast series, Life On The Other Side: Stories from prisoners, their families and those helping them find justice and redemption. Also in 2020, Alec created and hosted About Faith with Alec Klein, airing on iTunes, Spotify and elsewhere.

From 2011 to 2018, Alec ran The Medill Justice Project, a national investigative journalism center at Northwestern University. A full, tenured professor from 2008 to 2018, Alec led an investigation that discovered exculpatory information, prompting a federal judge to release an Illinois prisoner a decade before her release on a first-degree murder conviction, which was overturned. Another investigation Alec oversaw led to the exoneration of a Miami man who had been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Alec also directed a probe that freed an Oregon mother who had faced more than 30 years in prison. In addition, Alec led an investigation that helped set free an Oklahoma man from a life sentence after being convicted of a series of purse snatchings. Other investigations Alec led resulted in the freedom of a Michigan mother who had been convicted of a shaken-baby syndrome case; the freedom of a Louisiana rapper who had been convicted of murder; and the reduction of an Illinois mother’s 35-year sentence to 15 years in a murder case. In addition, Alec led an investigation in which a Louisiana inmate was released from solitary confinement after about 35 years.

Over the years, Alec has fought and won Freedom of Information Act appeals and access to records in state and federal courts as part of his investigations.

Alec grew The Medill Justice Project, inheriting a local program in jeopardy of collapse and building it into a national center, revamping its operations across the board, overhauling the website, introducing long-form investigative articles, features, news, videos, podcasts and other multimedia and utilizing social media, public relations and marketing. Alec founded MJP-TV, MJP Radio and MJP Magazine. He also created its internship, fellowship and visiting scholar programs. And Alec created the MJP board of advisers, recruiting industry leaders throughout the country, who contributed to the center. In addition, Alec forged partnerships with various organizations across the nation, including the Washington Post.

Under Alec’s guidance, The Medill Justice Project earned recognition nationally and internationally for its investigations, photography, videos, podcasts and website, including nearly 100 awards in seven years. Among them was a national Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award—the first in Medill’s history— as well as an Investigative Reporters & Editors award, a Sigma Delta Chi award and a Sunshine Award from the national Society of Professional Journalists. Alec also oversaw investigations that were honored with a regional Edward R. Murrow Award, several Peter Lisagor Awards, local Emmy nominations, Eppy Awards from Editor & Publisher as well as awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, the Online News Association and others. Alec was also named to the Northwestern University Associated Student Government’s annual Honor Roll after being selected from a campus-wide nomination process and chosen from nearly 1,200 nominations of faculty and administrators. He was also recognized as one of six Medill faculty members by the Multicultural Student Affairs for being significant and influential people in their lives, based on an annual survey.

As a Washington Post investigative reporter from 2000 to 2008, Alec wrote a groundbreaking series on the little-known but widespread practice of reusing single-use medical devices in the United States. The stories documented patient injuries and device malfunctions and showed how the industry has eluded comprehensive oversight and is comprised of several entrepreneurs who have run afoul of federal authorities. The series, which won the Society of American Business Editors and Writers award for special projects, prompted an investigation by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative arm, congressional hearings and industry reform.

Alec also wrote a three-part series for the Washington Post about the world’s big three credit-rating firms, showing how they dominate an important part of global finance with little oversight or accountability, how the rating system is subject to manipulation and conflicts of interest, and how the credit raters use strong-arm tactics to generate business. His series, a first-place winner in Washington’s Society of Professional Journalists, prompted an investigation by the New York attorney general, congressional hearings and the passage of federal law to strengthen government oversight of the industry.

Among his other stories at the Washington Post, Alec conducted a yearlong investigation of AOL’s takeover of Time Warner. His investigation, based on hundreds of confidential AOL documents, showed how AOL secretly inflated its revenue to pull off the largest merger in U.S. history to create the biggest media company in the world. His investigation sparked investigations of AOL by the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Alec’s series also prompted the company, then called AOL Time Warner, to launch its own internal investigation of its accounting, which led the company to admit that it had improperly reported at least $190 million in advertising revenue, causing it to restate two years of financial results. The company agreed to pay $510 million to settle criminal and civil allegations that its AOL division improperly pumped up revenue before and after its merger with Time Warner. In the wake of Alec’s investigation, several top AOL executives were forced to resign, several business partners involved in AOL’s schemes were indicted and convicted on fraud charges and the AOL division that was the focus of his investigation was disbanded. For his coverage of AOL, Alec won the Gerald Loeb Award, business journalism’s highest honor. He also won awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers in project reporting and the Virginia Press Association in news writing. Alec also contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning series on private security contractors in Iraq.

Alec has won a number of other awards and fellowships, including at the East-West Center and the Poynter Institute. Alec, who also worked as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun and Virginian-Pilot, is a frequent guest speaker, having presented at the National Press Foundation, the American Press Institute, the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the Asian American Journalists Association, the South Asian Journalists Association, Unity: Journalists of Color, and various newspapers and other media outlets, schools, associations, clubs, conferences and education groups throughout the country and the world, including Albania, Canada, France, Japan and South Africa. Alec has been a guest lecturer at several colleges, including the University of California at Berkeley, George Washington University and New York University. He was also selected as a business writer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Alec has given a series of webinars to professionals throughout the country and abroad. Alec has served as a judge for the Society of American Business Editors and Writers awards and other journalism contests and has appeared on several television and radio programs, including CNN, CNBC, CBS and NPR as well as the BBC and TV Asahi.

Alec, a Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude graduate of Brown University, is the author of several plays staged in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Rhode Island. His plays have also been selected for theater readings, including in New York, Washington, D.C., and Florida. One of his award-winning plays received a staged reading by Matthew Broderick and Fisher Stevens in New York City. Alec is the author of a published novel and the foreword to an edition of Show Me The Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication, a textbook adopted at universities across the nation.

Born in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., and raised in New York City, where he graduated from Stuyvesant High School, Alec is the son of a Japanese artist and an American journalist and the father of two children.