Nina Alvarez is an investigative documentary filmmaker and journalist whose work examines people caught in systems without accountability. She directed Almost American (PBS, 2024), which follows one family’s five-year fight to stay together; their lawsuit exposed how Trump political appointees moved to end Temporary Protected Status for some 400,000 people. Her film Fields of Promise is part of the Class of ’27 trilogy (America ReFramed, PBS World Channel), on early education for the children of migrant farmworkers, which received an Alfred I. duPont–Columbia Award. Her directing credits also include Very Young Girls (Showtime), on the commercial sexual exploitation of girls in New York; “The New Latinos,” an episode of the Peabody Award–winning PBS series Latino Americans; Critical Condition (Univision); and The Battle for America’s Schools (MSNBC). She was senior producer of the Fusion/Netflix investigative series The Naked Truth and a field producer on the Oscar-nominated Which Way Home (HBO). Her work has been recognized with Peabody, Emmy, duPont–Columbia and Robert F. Kennedy awards. Her recent Columbia Journalism Review investigation examines how the press covers sex trafficking. She began her career at ABC News and is the CBS Assistant Professor of International Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.
