David Yanofsky
Manager, Data Visualization
David is the Insights Lab’s Manager of Data Visualization. He uses the principles of design and the power of development to reveal insights in data that would otherwise go unnoticed. David’s work focuses on helping organizations use their data to understand—and tell substantively rich and visually intuitive stories—about compliance, risk management, and corporate culture.
Formerly a journalist, David led online data-visualization efforts at Bloomberg and was a founding member of Quartz’s newsroom. He has created, edited, and overseen numerous award-winning reporting and analysis projects, including revealing the true extent of Federal Reserve emergency lending during the 2008 Financial Crisis, the undercounting of deaths caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, a community of airline pilots flouting FAA safety rules, and the colorism of luxury and fashion brands on Instagram.
His work been published in The Atlantic, Bloomberg, Businessweek, Quartz, and others. He also created and published the first news article ever to be sold as an NFT.
Publications
- Cited, “L.A. on the Record: The Gascón factor in the L.A. mayor’s race,” The Los Angeles Times (July 16, 2022)
- Co-author, “Do you live close enough to a small US airport to have lead exposure? Check our maps,” Quartz (June 16, 2022)
- David Yanofsky and Amanda Shendruk, “These charts lay bare the world’s massive vaccine equity gap,” Quartz (April 14, 2022)
- David Yanofsky, “How to make great charts,” Quartz (February 18, 2022)
- Co-author, “US airlines are planning to unnecessarily burn 20,000 tons of CO2 per day because of FAA rules,” Quartz (September, 24, 2021)
- David Yanofsky and Lila MacLellan, “Cameo shows even celebrity women value their labor less than men,” Quartz (June 16, 2021)
- Edited, “Fashion brands aren’t keeping their Instagram diversity promises,” Quartz (March 16, 2021)
- David Yanofsky and Quartz Staff, “Which S&P 500 companies are changing their political donation policies?” Quartz (January 15, 2021)
- David Yanofsky, “Here’s what we know is wrong with the PPP data,” Quartz (July 13, 2020)
- Featured, “Weekly Wrap: Hollywood Versus Georgia, AirPods, 737 Max Troubles And Summer Travel,” NPR's It’s Been a Minute (May 31, 2019)
- David Yanofsky, “How easy is it to find one patient among 1.3 million anonymized medical records?” Quartz (July 11, 2019)
- Cited, “Data Journalism and the Law,” A Tow/Knight Report, Tow Center for Digital Journalism (December 12, 2018)
- Featured, “Weekly Wrap: GM, Awaiting Asylum, Stock Market,” NPR's It’s Been a Minute (November 30, 2018)
- David Yanofsky and Akshat Rathi, “What Saudi Arabia’s 200 GW solar power plant would look like—if placed in your neighborhood,” Quartz (April 1, 2018)
- Featured, “What happens when you sue the federal government … and win,” American Public Media's Marketplace (April 6, 2018)
- David Yanofsky and Akshat Rathi, “Interactive: Can you get carbon emissions under control?” Quartz (December 14, 2017)
- David Yanofsky, “Airlines are price gouging in the path of Hurricane Irma—and algorithms are to blame,” Quartz (September 6, 2017)
- David Yanofsky, “Are a third of Venmo transactions right now illegal gambling payments?” Quartz (March 16, 2017)
- Featured, “What it’s like to sue the government for data,” American Public Media's Marketplace (May 28, 2016)
- Featured, The Best American Infographics 2015, Mariner Books
- Featured, “FAA Ban Hasn’t Stopped Pilots from Snapping Selfies,” NPR's All Things Considered (February 5, 2015)
- Featured, “Should pilots filter their Instagramming habits?” CBS Saturday Morning (December 13, 2014)
- David Yanofsky, “The pilots of Instagram: beautiful views from the cockpit, violating rules of the air,” Quartz (December 11, 2014)
- Featured, “How to Make $1 billion” WNYC's The Takeaway (December 17, 2013)
- Co-author, “Victoria’s Secret Revealed in Child Picking Organic Cotton,” Bloomberg (December 15, 2011)
- Co-author, “The Fed’s Secret Liquidity Lifelines,” Bloomberg (August, 21, 2011)
Presentations
- Speaker, “Bringing accountability to your organization with bots,” News Product Alliance Summit (March 10, 2022)
- Moderator, “Democratizing access to Earth Observation Data,” Geospatial World Forum (April 3, 2019)
- Moderator, “Drop Everything and Work on Artificial Intelligence?” Foresight Institute Great Debates (November 10, 2016)
- Presenter, “The Charting Monster that Spawned from the Jaws of Defeat,” OpenVis Conference (April 26, 2016)
Education
- BFA (Graphic Design), Washington University in St. Louis, 2009