Katharine Lake Berz

Katharine Lake Berz is a Canadian freelance journalist who reports on the impact of Canadian and international issues on individuals. Her work has appeared in the Toronto Star (Freelance), The Globe and Mail, National Post, The Walrus, Broadview Magazine, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Canadian Press, TVO, Capital Daily, News Decoder, The Times Colonist, Healthy Debate and others.

Background
Lake Berz holds a bachelor's degree in commerce from Queen's University and a master's degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge. She worked at management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company between 1992 and 2002 and was a fellow in the Fellowship of Global Journalism at the University of Toronto.

Notable work
Lake Berz gained recognition for her coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. In 2023, she was nominated for a National Newspaper Award for her series on Ukrainian women and children who survived Russian war crime violence. Her film "Unbroken: A Story of Resistance" portrays these victims' fight for survival. “Unbroken” won Best Documentary at the Toronto Shorts International Film Festival and Best Collective Portrait at the International Portrait Film Festival. Lake Berz’s work has also taken her to visit AIDS victims in southern Africa, Indigenous communities in Australia, the slums of southern France, Thailand’s Russian exiles, refugees at the Mexico-U.S. border, squatters in Cuba, as well as rural First Nations, old-growth forests, anti-woke activists and homeless encampments across North America.