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Maren Machles

Investigative Producer

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Maren Machles is an investigative producer at POGO. She hosts and produces the organization’s first-ever investigative podcast, Bad Watchdog. The podcast fuses her colleagues’ hard-hitting investigations with narrative storytelling to hold the federal government’s most powerful agencies and figures to account. She joined POGO as a researcher on the Investigations and Research team in 2022, overseeing the organization’s tipline and investigating the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Customs and Border Protection. 

Before joining POGO, Maren worked with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, researching, documenting, and advocating for community-led solutions to the digital divide across the country and specifically within tribal communities. 

Previously, Maren was an investigative journalist with the Scripps Washington Bureau where she covered the U.S. immigration system, criminal justice, tribal justice issues, gender violence, and influential political figures. She has spent her career digging into the finances and backgrounds of powerful political figures, and into the systemic oppression of marginalized communities.

Maren was a recipient of the 2020 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Grand Prize Award for her work on criminal justice issues in Indian Country. In 2021, she was part of a team that was nominated for a Peabody and won the Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Audio – Small award for their work investigating the Louisville Metro Police Department after Breonna Taylor was killed by police. Her work has appeared on NPR, Stitcher Premium, PBS NewsHour, Twin Cities PBS, USA Today, Newsy/Scripps News, DecodeDC, Long Beach Post, and across Scripps’ local television stations.

Maren lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with her dog and 35-plus plants.

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