Chiara Eisner investigates and reports high-impact stories across the state of South Carolina. She is the newspaper’s 2021 Journalist of the Year and the South Carolina Press Association’s Assertive Journalist of the Year. The Secrets of the Death Chamber series she reported for The State was a finalist in the national 2021 Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Award competition. Her reporting on the harvest of horseshoe crabs in South Carolina was part of the package that earned her honorable mention in the 2021 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, an annual prize for science journalists.