Cam Simpson

Simpson was raised in St. Charles, Illinois. He obtained his degree in political science and journalism from Eastern Illinois University.

Career

In an interview with the Poynter Institute, Simpson said many of his investigative pieces for Businessweek focus on connecting people who pull the levers of power in the world with "the people who get caught in the gears."^[3] Several of Simpson’s investigative features for Businessweek have focused on the world’s technology giants. A 2014 piece detailed how Samsung^[4] tried to silence or thwart the families of young women who contracted rare cancers working on its assembly lines (the company issued an apology^[5] on South Korean television for its treatment of the families). After a 2013 story^[6] about the exploitation of foreign migrant workers who made iPhone cameras, Apple said^[7] it banned all forms of bonded labor from its supplier factories worldwide. A 2012 cover story^[8] exposed death and environmental destruction in the global supply chain for all smartphones and tablets, for which Apple also later acknowledged its role.^[9]

Beyond tech companies, Simpson's reporting also included a 2014 piece^[10] detailing the role of the largest-listed hedge fund on Wall Street in providing a $100 million cash infusion for Robert Mugabe’s government as he was rolling out a campaign of violence, torture and murder to hold onto power in Zimbabwe. Simpson also has done features for the magazine on the corporate structure^[11] and financial power^[12] of the Islamic State. In September 2015, Publisher’s Marketplace announced that HarperCollins had signed Simpson to write a narrative non-fiction book about a trio of human rights lawyers and a journalist who unravel the mysterious murders of a dozen unlikely victims of the Iraq war, following a trail of profiteers from the Himalayas to Houston.^[13]

Previously, he worked for The Wall Street Journal, with posts in the Middle East and Washington