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Sarah Rafique is an investigative producer at KTRK, a Disney and ABC-owned television station. She works closely with the Houston station’s investigative reporter to turn daily and longer-term investigative stories that hold pubic officials accountable.

During her decade as a journalist in Texas, Sarah has mastered the state’s open records laws. Her skills also include data analysis and visualization using ArcGIS, Esri, Fourish, Datawrapper and Tableau. She’s proficient in RStudio, a programming and data analysis language, and has created standalone pages from scratch for the station’s investigative pieces.

Prior to joining KTRK in June 2019, Sarah spent two years as a digital investigative reporter working for her hometown station, KXAN News, the NBC affiliate in Austin, Texas. One of her first investigations at KXAN was a series looking into improper billing by the state agency operating toll roads across Texas. That series led to the state agency cutting ties with its collections agency. The state also waived $1.3 billion in late fees for millions of drivers across the state. She was recognized by the Headliners Foundation of Texas for innovation in enterprise and reporting. That investigation was also awarded a Lone Star Regional Emmy.

Sarah has been a member of Investigative Reporters & Editors since 2016 and received the Philip L. Graham Diversity Fellowship to attend the 2017 IRE Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. She received a second IRE fellowship to attend a Computer-Assisted Reporting bootcamp in 2018.

She has more than a decade of experience in local news, including at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, where she was recognized for a series about an African-American man who was wrongly accused of rape, but died in prison before becoming the first person posthumously exonerated in Texas. For that series, she had exclusive interviews with the rape survivor and presiding judge in that case. Sarah’s empathy allows her to connect with subjects who feel comfortable opening up to her about trauma and tragedy. She is able to balance those interviews responsibly to report on difficult topics while minimizing retraumatization for survivors.

She first joined the West Texas newsroom as a cops reporter, where she broke several stories picked up by the Associated Press and ESPN. Later, as an investigative reporter at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, she received seven Texas Associated Press Managing Editors recognitions for a single year of reporting, including being named Star Reporter of the Year for an expose on sex trafficking and troubles with the state’s foster care system. (Click here for judge’s comments.)

She began her career in 2012 at the Killeen Daily Herald, where she focused on military reporting and embedded with 3,200 Fort Hood soldiers as they prepared for an upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. She also assisted the award-winning newsroom in its breaking news coverage of the April 2014 Fort Hood shooting.

She started in Killeen as a copy editor and print newspaper designer. Her experience as a copy editor allows her to self-edit so first drafts are clean and concise. With a passion for storytelling and a love of creating interactives for data, she’s capable of in-depth and investigative reporting on just about any topic.

Stay connected with her via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or click here to email her.