Let’s meet SAH
Sylvia A. Harvey, also known as SAH, is an award-winning journalist, speaker, and author of The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family (Bold Type Books, 2020). She writes where policy meets people, exploring the intersections of race, class, policy, and incarceration. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Elle, Politico, Vox, The Marshall Project, The Root, VQR, and more. Her commentary has aired on NPR, WBAI, Embodied WUNC, Cheddar News, and elsewhere. At conferences, universities, and corporate forums, she brings her fiercest storytelling, inviting audiences to pause, reconsider, and see how systems quietly shape lives and communities.
For SAH, journalism is more than a craft: it is a human right, a tool to uncover truth and drive action. Her research and reporting examine how politics, history, public health, policy, and economics shape everyday life. She focuses on how key social institutions—the criminal legal system, child welfare, and education—exacerbate the collateral effects of mass incarceration. Following the data to the doorstep, she reveals how these systems shape the lives of families and communities. Her work is used in university courses and has been cited by federal lawmakers calling for criminal justice reform
Raised in Oakland, SAH earned a BA in sociology from Columbia University, where research deepened her commitment to understanding inequality and fueled her desire to communicate beyond academia. She later pursued graduate studies at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Her work has been supported by grants, fellowships, and appointments from Type Media Center, the Logan Nonfiction Program at the Carey Institute for Global Good, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Poynter Institute, the Data-Driven Reporting Project (a partnership between Medill and the Google News Initiative), and the Alicia Patterson Foundation.
Her honors include the National Headliner Award and the National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence. Her book was a finalist for the Media for a Just Society Awards.
Beyond reporting and speaking, SAH is a founding leader of the Institute for Independent Journalists, mentors emerging journalists at Altavoz Lab, serves as a media expert with SheSource, and advises the Statewide Initiatives for Children with Incarcerated Parents. She has taught as an O’Brien Fellow and supervised dozens of CUNY interns.
That same commitment powers Just Love Lab, an initiative SAH founded to teach justice-involved youth ages 16 to 24 investigative journalism and financial literacy. Their work will be published through Just Love Ink and fuel our Health Index data platform.
You can connect with her on social media @Ms_SAH
