Giannina Segnini

Giannina Segnini Picado (born 1970) is a Costa Rican journalist recognized for having uncovered two political scandals that led to convictions of former presidents – the ICE-Alcatel case and Caja-Fischel case cases.

She has become a distinguished figure in Latin America for her work in investigative and data journalism.

Giannina Segnini graduated with a degree in collective communication sciences from the University of Costa Rica in 1987, and was a Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University from 2001 to 2002.

She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), and is director of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism's Master of Science Data Journalism Program.

She has given numerous lectures globally on investigative data journalism and corruption.

Her daughter is model and actress Carolina Coto Segnini.

Segnini began working at the newspaper La Nación in 1994, creating its Research and Data Intelligence Unit, a multidisciplinary team that combined work with databases and street reporting.

In 2004, together with Ernesto Rivera and Mauricio Herrera Ulloa, she published a series of articles that revealed cases of corruption of former presidents Rafael Ángel Calderón Fournier (1990–1994) and Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (1998–2002).

Both received multi-year prison sentences, although Calderón's was conditionally enforced, while Rodriguez's appeals led to his acquittal.

Within the newspaper, she wrote about leaked diplomatic cables related to Costa Rica and investigated irregular handling of money from the Episcopal Conference of Costa Rica, the abandonment of children by parents subsidized by the state, undeclared properties of ministers, and illegal political campaign contributions.

She served as its director until 2014.

Less than two weeks after the 2014 general election, La Nación did not publish the results of a commissioned survey, as reported by Semanario Universidad.

La Nación justified the decision in an editorial the following day, arguing that "in the special circumstances of this election, we would contribute little to the civic process and much to malicious speculation."

After the first electoral round, Segnini resigned, stating "a series of editorial decisions of this newspaper, based on reasons that I consider foreign to journalism, prevent me from continuing to work for this company."

Along with her team, she developed and contributed greatly to the ICIJ interactive application for the Offshore Leaks project, as well as participating in ICIJ's Panama Papers project.