Finalist: Margie Mason and Robin McDowell of Associated Press

Margie Mason has reported for The Associated Press from more than 20 countries across four continents. Based in Southeast Asia for nearly two decades, she has worked as a regional medical writer, a correspondent in Vietnam and a bureau chief in Indonesia. In 2016, she and three other female AP journalists won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, along with numerous other awards, for a series of stories about slavery in Southeast Asia’s fishing industry, resulting in more than 2,000 men being freed. She was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and an Asian Studies Fellow at the University of Hawaii. She holds a journalism degree and an honorary doctorate from West Virginia University.

Robin McDowell spent most of her career working in Southeast Asia, covering everything from bloody coups and al-Qaida-linked terrorist attacks to plane crashes, tsunamis and the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims. Now based in Minnesota, she continues to focus on the world’s most vulnerable, including minorities and others who are persecuted because of their race, religion, gender or social status. She was on a team of reporters that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series of stories that led to the freedom of 2,000 enslaved migrant shipmen in Asia, arrests, convictions and revisions to US law.