About

Jenn Thornhill Verma is an award-winning investigative journalist covering the ocean, fisheries, environment and climate change. She is a 2026 and 2024-2025 Pulitzer Center Ocean Reporting fellow with The Globe and Mail.

Her reporting combines best-available data and evidence with the perspectives of those wearing the boots in the boats in the harbours and waterways where the story happens. Jenn is as comfortable demystifying data with top scientists in the world, as she is baiting a fishing hook with fishers on the wharf—and that’s earned her the respect and trust of both. She is driven to make what’s important, interesting and a pleasure for news audiences.

As Canada’s first Pulitzer Center Ocean Reporting Network fellow, she investigated Canada-U.S. cross-border protections for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale in The Globe and Mail’s 2024-25 Entangled series, examining solutions to fishing gear entanglements, vessel strikes, climate-driven habitat shifts, and ocean noise pollution.

In 2026, Verma returns as an ORN fellow with the Pulitzer Center/The Globe to investigate how regulatory gaps enable legally harvested Canadian Arctic wildlife to disappear into illegal global markets for The Globe’s Surfaced series.

Verma’s earlier work includes her coverage of the collapse of Canada’s east coast cod fishery, detailed in her nonfiction book “Cod Collapse” and animated short film “Last Fish, First Boat.” Her 2024 Unsettled series for The Globe examined how Labrador Inuit are adapting to climate change. The reporting contextualized local sea ice data according to the Nunatsiavut seasonal calendar, revealing that ice now spans only two of the region’s six seasons — down from four—and produced Canada’s first interactive Inuttitut sea ice glossary, developed through a data-sharing agreement. She also co-founded Seasplainer, a fisheries and oceans explainer series for The Independent, and previously worked in radio.

Verma’s reporting has earned gold awards in environment and climate change (CAJ, 2025), best column (DPA, 2024), business (AJA, 2024), and best cover (AJA, 2020, for her landscape art); silver in climate change (DPA, 2025), best digital editorial package (DPA, 2025), best science and technology reporting (DPA, 2024), and best profile article (AJA, 2020, 2019 & 2018). She has been a finalist for climate solutions reporting (CJF, 2025), online news (CAJ, 2024), data journalism (CAJ, 2023), historical writing (Atlantic Book Awards, 2021), and best new magazine writer (NMA, 2019).

A fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and The Explorers Club, Verma serves as president of the alumni association at the University of King’s College, where she also sits on the board.

She holds an MFA (creative nonfiction), an MSc (medicine), and a bachelor of journalism with combined honours in biology. She previously spent fifteen years with Healthcare Excellence Canada, designing the foundation’s collaborative improvement approach and writing the Mythbusters series, which debunked widely held beliefs about Canadian healthcare using best evidence.

Jenn Thornhill Verma’s CV | Follow Jenn