Paul Cuadros is an award-winning investigative reporter and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Time magazine, Salon.com, The Chicago Reporter, and other national and local publications. He joined the school in 2007.

For the past 20 years, Cuadros has focused his reporting on issues of race and poverty in America. In 1999, he won a fellowship with the Alicia Patterson Foundation, sponsored by New York Newsday and considered one of the most prestigious fellowships in journalism, to report on emerging Latino communities in rural poultry-processing towns in the South. The culmination of his reporting was his book, “A Home on the Field: How One Championship Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America,” which tells the story of Siler City, N.C., as it copes and struggles with Latino immigration through the lives of a predominantly Latino high school soccer team.

“A Home on the Field” was the summer reading selection at UNC in 2009. He is the only faculty member at UNC to have his book selected as summer reading. The book has been chosen for summer reading programs at other universities in North Carolina and beyond.

Cuadros is a co-recipient of the 2006 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Journalism Award, Team Award, for his contribution to the radio series “North Carolina Voices: Understanding Poverty” broadcast on WUNC-FM. He has won the National Association of Hispanic Journalist’s award for online reporting, and he won the UNC Diversity Award in 2012 for his work on campus opening doors for minority students, faculty and staff.

Cuadros serves as the chair and executive director of the UNC Scholars’ Latino Initiative, a three-year mentoring and college preparatory program between UNC students and Latino high school students at six area high schools. The program has more than 150 students and is housed at the Center for Global Initiatives. Cuadros is also the co-founder of the Carolina Latina/o Collaborative, which is the Latino educational and cultural center at UNC. He is also co-founder of the Latina/o Caucus, a university coalition of faculty and staff on campus that advocates for Latino interests at the university.

Cuadros is involved in a documentary film production and episodic series for Nuyorican Productions Inc. that is based on his book and chronicles the lives of Latino youth on the soccer team he coaches in Siler City.

He is working on his second book on migration.

 

Education

  • M.A., Northwestern University
  • B.A., University of Michigan

Citations

  • A Home on the Field: How One Championship Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America, Harpers. September 2006.
  • Un Juego Sin Fronteras: Como un Equipo de Futbol Crea Una Nueva Esperanza en los Estados Unidos. Rayo. Wrote and edited the translation of the original book and expanded the book to include a new section on Latina girls and an updated epilogue, HarperCollins, 2008.
  • Un Juego Sin Fronteras: Como un Equipo de Futbol Crea Una Nueva Esperanza en los Estados Unidos. Rayo. Wrote and edited the translation of the original book and expanded the book to include a new section on Latina girls and an updated epilogue, HarperCollins, 2008.
  • The Cheating of America: How Tax Avoidance and Evasion by the Super Rich Are Costing the Country Billions—And What You Can Do About it.
  • The Buying of the Congress: How Special Interests Have Stolen Your Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.