Ray Rivera, founder of Searchlight New Mexico, is Executive Editor of The Oklahoman and oversees Gannett’s Middle America Region, which includes the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Des Moines Register, the El Paso Times, and, until recently, the Austin American-Statesman. He was formerly Managing Editor of The Seattle Times, where he was lead editor of the Times’ coverage of systemic problems with Boeing’s 737 MAX that led to two crashes and 346 deaths. The year-long series was awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting along with several others of journalism’s top prizes, including the George Polk and Gerald Loeb awards. He previously worked at the paper as a reporter and Deputy Managing Editor over investigations. He has also worked as a staff writer for The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Salt Lake Tribune, the Santa Fe New Mexican and the Carlsbad Current-Argus. His journalism highlights include covering Afghanistan for The New York Times, where his stories included a look at the use of death squads by insurgents along the Pakistan border. He also covered the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the Fort Hood shooting in 2009 and the tragic killing of 20 first graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn, in 2012. He left The New York Times in 2013 to become executive editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican, the paper where he got his start as a news reporter. Under his leadership, the paper was named the best small newspaper in America in 2015 by the Local Media Association. While in New Mexico he also founded and continues to serve on the board of Searchlight New Mexico, a non-profit news organization dedicated to investigative reporting. He returned to The Seattle Times in September 2017 to take over investigations. Ray lives in Oklahoma City with his wife, Sarah Wright Rivera, and their three children, two dogs and two cats.