About Natalie

Natalie Pate is a K-12 education reporter and producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting. Natalie has written about education in Oregon and beyond for nearly a decade. You may have heard her on OPB or NPR, or seen her byline in outlets such as the Statesman Journal, Oregon Capital Chronicle, Eater PDX, The Hechinger Report and USA TODAY.

Born and raised in Colorado, Natalie moved to Oregon to attend Willamette University where she earned her B.A. in Politics and French and Francophone Studies. She lived briefly in Washington, D.C. in 2014 before returning to the Pacific Northwest and reporting for the Statesman Journal.

Natalie served as the education reporter for the Statesman for more than seven years. She was also the lead and co-founder of the newspaper’s live community event series, the Salem Storytellers Project.

Natalie is a former fellow for Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) and the Education Writers Association (EWA). She continues to mentor for IRE today, and she serves as the journalistic consultant for Willamette University’s student newspaper, The Collegian. Natalie was the host and producer of the 2023 limited-series podcast On the Outside, made with and for youth with incarcerated parents. And she is the author of the bilingual children’s book for charity, Bandito the Puppito Dreams of a Home /Bandito el Perrito Sueña con un Hogar.

As a watchdog and investigative reporter, Natalie works to hold leaders and institutions accountable, while also highlighting the stories and perspectives of students, families, educators and other community members most impacted by the issues at hand.

She has covered everything from early childhood education and K-12 schools to higher ed institutions, adult education, education in prisons and education-related policies at the Oregon State Capitol. She frequently writes about how socioeconomic topics such as immigration, disability rights, race, housing, health and language intersect with our systems of learning and who gets to access them.

In 2022, Natalie published an in-depth series with the Statesman Journal and USA TODAY on the importance and lack of literacy education for adults in state prisons via a reporting fellowship with EWA. She presented her findings at the World Literacy Summit at Oxford in 2023.

Natalie also has experience as a general assignment reporter. She has covered breaking news, food-related legislation and city and economic development, among other things. No matter what she’s writing about, Natalie cares deeply about journalistic ethics and the importance of transparency with readers and listeners.

Natalie has received awards from the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association and Oregon Newspapers Foundation for her educational coverage. In 2018, she received an award within the USA TODAY Network for her and her co-workers’ coverage of Salem’s homelessness crisis. In 2021, she was named a Godfrey Wells Stancill Fellow with IRE.

In her free time, Natalie can be found performing or teaching at local theatres and dance companies. She volunteers with Marion County Dog Services and loves exploring the outdoors, reading and writing fiction and poetry, learning new languages, traveling, playing the guitar and spending time with her friends and family.

Her website includes some of her news stories and photographs, as well as academic writings, personal essays and more. Read her latest stories from OPB here.