Vikki Valentine

Vikki Valentine is NPR's Chief Science Editor, overseeing the network's science and health news coverage across broadcast and digital platforms. Prior to that, she managed NPR's health team, including its coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

Valentine was the lead senior editor for the NPR team that won a 2014 Peabody for its on-the-ground coverage of the largest Ebola outbreak in history: an epidemic in West Africa that spread to nearly 30,000 people. That coverage was also recognized by the Edward R. Murrow awards, the Online News Association and a Pictures of the Year International's Award of Excellence.

She was lead editor on the Gracie Award-winning series "#HowToRaiseAHuman" and "#15Girls." The 2018 series "#HowToRaiseAHuman" searched remote parts of the world and human evolutionary history for lost secrets to raising kids. The 2015 series "#15Girls" explored the pervasive and deadly discrimination girls in developing countries face.

In 2012, as the network's climate and environment editor, Valentine won a duPont-Columbia Award for coverage of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. In 2009, she won the National Academies Communication Award for the year-long multimedia project "Climate Connections." The series was also recognized by the 2008 National Academy of Sciences award, the Metcalf award for environmental journalism, the White House News Photographers Association awards and the Webbys.

Prior to NPR, Valentine worked as a daily science news editor at Discovery.com and as a features editor and reporter at The Baltimore Sun. Her writing has also been published by The New York Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian Channel, Marketplace, Science Magazine and Washingtonian Magazine.

Valentine received a master's from University College London's Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine. Her bachelor's is from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Writing under the name V.L. Valentine, she is the author of the historical thrillers The Plague Letters and Begars Abbey.