Not that she needed to win the Pulitzer Prize for this reason, but Cassandra Jaramillo has certainly validated her Rising Star Award presented by Friends of The Daily Texan in 2021.

Congratulations, Cassandra.

She was a member of the ProPublica team that won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize this year for public service for the series “Life of the Mother,” which the judges described as “urgent reporting about pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in states with strict abortion laws.” The prize is given to the staff of a news organization that performed “meritorious public service.”

This is the second consecutive year the organization was awarded the distinction. It is the eighth Pulitzer for ProPublica.

In her final semester at UT, Ms. Jaramilllo joined the Texan after a long stint in broadcast journalism.

She covered the UT administration and major campus news, including the killing of Haruka Weiser.

Ms. Jaramillo wrote that year that while she had enjoyed broadcast news, “there’s nothing that made me more proud than when I would walk by an orange Daily Texan newsstand and see my byline from a few feet away.”

She graduated from UT with a Bachelor’s degree in journalism.

Jaramillo joined ProPublica as a reporter in 2022, covering reproductive health and voting rights. Her investigation on True the Vote, a nonprofit that has peddled misinformation about election fraud, was a finalist for the Livingston Award, which honors exceptional reporting by journalists under 35.

Prior to ProPublica, she was a leading reporter at The Dallas Morning News covering law enforcement at the paper, which includes the Dallas Police Department, one of the nation’s largest and most followed police agencies.

Ms. Jaramillo joined the News in 2016 as a life and arts reporter. Her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal and Austin American-Statesman.

Ms. Jaramillo has overcome great odds to achieve her success. As a Mexican immigrant, she’s spoken openly about the challenges her family faced, including living in poverty and changing her name when they moved to the U.S. in fear of not fitting in.

Her nomination for the Friends of The Daily Texan Rising Star award for outstanding young journalists noted that “Ms. Jaramillo’s perseverance, dedication to her craft and triumphs make her a deserved candidate for the Rising Star award.”