Bio
Zane Schwartz is the Chief Executive Officer of the Investigative Journalism Foundation, one of Canada’s largest and most prominent nonprofit media outlets.
Zane is a co-applicant on $4.8 million in academic grants with the Faculty of Information. These include a seven-year, $2.5 million Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Partnership grant and a five-year $1.5 million Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Alliance grant. He has advised undergraduate, master’s and PhD students at U of T.
The Investigative Journalism Foundation was named the sixth most innovative media company in the world by Fast Company magazine in 2025. The nonprofit partners with U of T to build Canada’s only constantly-updating databases showing who donates to politicians across Canada, who lobbies them, and how the government spends taxpayer money.
Zane has previously won the Project of the Year award from the National Newspapers Awards and a Data Journalism Award from the Global Editors Network. He is a two-time winner of the Goff Penny Award, which is given to the best young newspaper journalist in Canada. He was also named the Best Young Journalist by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers Canadian chapter. He has worked at Maclean’s magazine, the National Post and the Calgary Herald.
Zane also volunteers as the National Chair of the Canadian Association of Journalists. He founded the CAJ’s annual diversity survey and co-leads its efforts on press freedom issues, including freeing jailed journalists and intervening in Supreme Court cases.