Hello, I’m Elizabeth Caldwell, Jax Today's new investigative reporter

My first ambition in life was to be a photographer for National Geographic. I liked the idea of capturing life in far-flung locations. Later, when I learned about the amount of equipment a photographer needs, I dropped the picture-taking part and just traveled a lot. One interesting bit of trivia about me is I’ve been to every continent, even Antarctica.

After years of globetrotting, I tried to settle into a career. I had jobs before — deckhand, waitress, delivery driver — but nothing stuck. In my early 30s, I tried teaching English in public school. My students were important to me, but I had to admit I wasn’t doing them justice. Teaching didn’t come naturally to me.

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One afternoon, sitting in my apartment in South Florida, I listened to a hit podcast where a man tried to solve a murder. I don’t think it was a great podcast, but the improvisational quality struck me. I could try, I thought, to do something similar. I persuaded a family who hunted invasive pythons in the Everglades to let me tag along on a nighttime trip. It was the first audio story I ever made. It wasn’t very good, but I could hear the possibility.

I eventually went back to school to earn a credential in radio. I could tell I was finally on the right track professionally. My first public media job was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, working with other journalists who taught me the importance of holding power to account. It wasn’t long before I developed a taste for investigative reporting. Right before I moved away from Tulsa, I had the privilege of watching a woman who had been sentenced to life without parole leave prison because of my work.

I’m honored to be an investigative reporter for Jacksonville Today. If you have a tip, you can e-mail me at elizabeth@jaxtoday.org.