Tisha Thompson is an investigative reporter and senior writer for ESPN based in Washington, D.C., who specializes in complex investigations that explore the intersection of sports and power, including league and government investigations, high-profile civil and criminal cases, sports betting, fan and stadium security, sexual assault, athlete health and safety, ticketing and consumer issues, and the evolving field of sports banking, including the use of public funding, private equity, hedge funds, cryptocurrencies and other financial instruments.

Her 2024 investigation into why Shohei Ohtani’s bank account sent wire transfers to an illegal bookmaking operation directly led to the criminal conviction of Ohtani’s long-time interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and received top journalism honors from Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE), Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) and the Society for Advancing Business Writing & Editing (SABEW).

Some of her other high-profile stories include her workplace investigation of the Washington Commanders and its former owner Dan Snyder, sexual assault allegations against former MLB pitcher Trevor Bauer, her investigation of the death of Bucknell football player Calvin Dickey, Jr., and sexual abuse allegations against former U.S. Snowboard Coach Peter Foley.

Thompson is a member of ESPN’s 2019 Peabody Award winning team for its work on “Spartan Secrets,” and received the 2019 national Gracie Award for Best Online Video Host for her work on “Being Believed: A Conversation with Sister Survivors,” which also received the 2019 Gold Telly Award for Best Online Talk Show. She’s the recipient of three other national Gracie Awards, 24 regional Emmy Awards, 15 regional Edward R. Murrow Awards, the national Gerald Loeb Award for business reporting and the national Society of Professional Journalist Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service journalism. “Dead Man Walking,” her E60 profile of a man targeted for murder, was part of a team entry that won a national Emmy Award in 2019.

Her investigation of the University of Rochester Football team, entitled “I Just Wanted to Survive,” was nominated for the 2018 Dan Jenkins Medal in Sportswriting and ranked No. 2 by Chartbeat’s “100 Most Engaging Stories of the Year,” with more than 17.5 million minutes engaged the year it was published.

Thompson joined ESPN in January 2017. She previously worked as an investigative reporter in Washington, D.C., for WRC-TV and WTTG-TV, and in Baltimore at WMAR-TV. She served as a reporter and anchor at WPSD-TV in Paducah, Ky., and as an anchor and state house reporter at KOMU-TV in Columbia, Mo.

She played women’s rugby at Princeton University and received her master’s degree from the University of Missouri Graduate School of Journalism. She is an advisory board member for the Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) and has served in a multitude of volunteer positions for other journalism non-profits, including co-chairing IRE’s 50^th Anniversary Task Force, which raised more than $1 million to train and support investigative reporters.

She is a member of the multi-generational Thompson family that has been consistently producing bylines for more than 125 years. As a reporter and editor for the Wyoming State Tribune, her great-grandfather John Charles Thompson sent dispatches to the New York Times and covered the hanging of the notorious gunslinger Tom Horn. Her paternal grandfather Shelby Thompson reported for the Associated Press before embarking on a career documenting the earliest days of the Atomic Energy Commission and NASA, where he played an integral role in making sure a film camera recorded man’s first step on the moon. Her maternal grandfather Steve Hopkins worked his way from copy editor to publisher of the Marshfield News-Herald, while her maternal grandmother, uncle and aunt also worked as journalists in newspapers and magazines. Her mother Lea Thompson spent four decades with NBC News, first as an anchor and investigative reporter at WRC-TV and later as the network’s Chief Consumer Correspondent on Dateline NBC and NBC Nightly News.

She resides near her hometown of Washington D.C.

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