James V. Grimaldi is a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner and investigative journalist with deep experience in mentoring, writing, editing and nonprofit board work in the journalism industry. Among his laurels are Pulitzers for his work at The Washington Post in 2005 that exposed lobbyist Jack Abramoff's bribery schemes and at The Wall Street Journal in 2018 when he and a team identified federal regulators investing in companies they oversaw. He was one of  The Orange County Register reporters who won a 1997 Pulitzer on medical misconduct. In his work over the years, he has spoken to dozens of whistleblowers about wrongdoing they wanted to report.

A past president of IRE, Grimaldi has mentored young journalists for decades, and is a frequent guest lecturer. Grimaldi is a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the nation's leading defender of the media's First Amendment rights, and he previously served on the board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism, where he continues to mentor grantees as a senior advisor.