Thomas Peele is an investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group, specializing in data collection and analysis. He is also a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where he co-teaches a class on public-records reporting. He’s won over 50 journalism awards for long-term investigations of government corruption, the environment, casino gambling and murders to a story in the first person voice of a Christmas tree waiting to be bought on Christmas Eve. He holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Long Island University and a master's in creative writing from the University of San Francisco. Follow him on Twitter: @thomas_peele.