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    Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune Ravitz-Cheroff reception, Friday, April 8, 2016.

    Honoring the soundtrack of my mother's life

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    As my mother lay dying in September, we surrounded her with song. It became our way to connect with her, when her deteriorating brain allowed for little else.

    The naked truth

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    She was the perfect hero: a cancer survivor baring her double-mastectomy scars on a 1,000-mile walk to Washington. Until her own words got in the way.
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    Where Trump support and Obamacare use soar together

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    Deep in the Sandhills of rural Nebraska, Grant County has the highest rate of Obamacare enrollees in the US. It also voted overwhelmingly for President Trump. An outsider might see this as a disconnect. Residents say it makes perfect sense but can't be understood unless you live there. I set out to try.
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    Back to the beginning: The sweat lodge ceremony, as intended

    Story by Jessica Ravitz, CNN Video by Anne Lagamayo, CNN
    When disgraced self-help guru James Arthur Ray ran a sweat lodge ceremony, three people died. In a real indigenous sweat, under the guidance of an internationally respected spiritual leader and teacher, people get a second chance at life.
    Ron His Horse Is Thunder, a spokesman for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, walks along the bank of the Cannon Ball River which connects with the Missouri River and is the source of the tribe's drinking water - after explaining the tribe's opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), September 4, 2016, in an interview with AFP at an encampment of Native Americans and their supporters near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. / AFP / Robyn BECK / TO GO WITH AFP STORY by Nova SAFO, "Native Americans united by oil pipeline fight" (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

    The sacred land at the center of the Dakota pipeline dispute

    Story by Jessica Ravitz, CNN Video by Sara Sidner and Matthew Gannon, CNN
    Corporate greed and a potential environmental disaster are two arguments against the Dakota Access Pipeline. But the more complicated issue challenging Western sensibilities is about threats to sacred land. What's at stake, and what does it even mean to be sacred?

    Can forgotten rubella children of the '60s hold clue for Zika babies?

    Story by Jessica Ravitz, CNN Video by Anne Lagamayo, CNN
    Who is going to take care of the babies irreparably damaged after being born to Zika-infected women? What resources will be available to their families? What will become of these children when they are adults still in need of around-the-clock care? What happened more than a half century ago may serve as a warning now.

    Before Orlando: The (former) deadliest LGBT attack in U.S. history

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    There are some distinctions nobody wants to see passed on. The site of the deadliest attack on the LGBT community in U.S. history is one of them. For nearly 43 years, up until the mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub, that horrible title belonged to New Orleans. It went largely overlooked.

    Meet the Gnomist: A force for good

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    She secretly created a magical forest in a Kansas suburb. Her work captured the imagination of children and adults, drew strangers together in wonderment and comforted a family reeling from grief. But who is she and what's she up to now?
    IDF honor guard flank Rabin's flag-draped coffin during a public viewing at Knesset on November 5, 1995.

    Rabin's assassination: A night that changed Israel's history -- and my life

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    We were 20-somethings, living in Israel at a time that felt magical. The promise of peace hung in the air. And then 20 years ago, on the immediate heels of the country's largest peace rally, a Jewish extremist fired his gun and changed everything. The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shaped my life at a time when I was searching for where I belonged. And I wasn't alone.
    Louis Vitullo appears with the rape kit that bears his name in the January 1979 edition of the Chicago Police Star.

    The story behind the first rape kit

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    The first time Tristin Engels realized her grandpa was a big deal, she was about 8 and on the side of a road in Wisconsin. A flat tire interrupted a drive home from a family fishing trip, and the police officer who pulled over to help her grandfather became starstruck when he learned his name.
    VATICAN CITY, VATICAN - OCTOBER 08: Pope Francis attends his weekly public audience in St. Peter's Square on October 8, 2014 in Vatican City, Vatican. Speaking to the crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square for the weekly General Audience Pope Francis appealed for Christian unity, pointing out that divisions between Christians of different denominations are hurtful for the Church and for Christ. (Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images)

    The Pope: Not just for Catholics anymore

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    An ordained reverend raised as a conservative Baptist admits to having a "man crush" on the guy. A rabbi long-steeped in the climate crisis credits him for mobilizing Jews to action. An imam from Syria thanks him for protecting his family and people. Pope Francis may be the head of the world's largest Christian church, but he's captured hearts across the faith spectrum.
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    Voices of Auschwitz

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    Liberated 70 years, only a fraction of the prisoners at Auschwitz survived. Beaten but not broken, they built new lives, new families. But wartime scars changed them forever, and that legacy shaped who their children became.

    Peering inside a batterer's mind -- and his victim's soul

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    He's nothing like I imagined. His demeanor is gentle, his smile and handshake warm, his words friendly and measured. Where's the batterer I've come to meet? The one I've enlisted to help me understand: Why do some men do this? How can they be stopped?
    Ten years after her husband was killed on September 11, Baraheen Ashrafi's tears still come easy. 8/23/2011

    For Muslim family, faith complicates grief for loved one lost on 9/11

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    If there were a roadmap when it comes to mourning, the journey taken by Baraheen Ashrafi and her children was unmarked. As she reeled from grief, this 9/11 widow and her family could not count on the kindness of strangers. Still she somehow found the strength to embrace and not fear her identity.
    Mourners react in Jerusalem during the Tuesday funeral of four French Jews killed in an Islamist attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris last week.

    'Je Suis Juif': Do Jews and France have a future together?

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    The four men killed by Islamist terrorists in a kosher supermarket in Paris now rest in Jerusalem, 2,000 miles away from the country they called home. France has the largest Jewish community in Europe. But the recent attacks, amid rising anti-Semitism and increased immigration to Israel, may take a toll.

    Town devastated by fertilizer explosion is guided by the West way

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    Next to the 24-hour Czech Stop off I-35 in central Texas, travelers line up to get a taste of the pastries and breads that define this community. But to really know West, a small town catapulted into the news, you have to venture about half a mile east. There, past the Ole Czech Smoke House selling sausages and the flags flying at half-staff, the people tell the story.
    From left, 11-year-old Denise McNair and 14-year-olds Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley were killed. Three former Ku Klux Klan members were later convicted of murder.

    Siblings of the bombing: Remembering Birmingham church blast 50 years on

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    Fifty years have passed since a bomb tore through Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, leaving four girls dead. The blast changed a nation. And for the brothers and sisters of the victims who died that day, it was an event that rocked their foundations and shaped their lives.

    Road trip to the end of the world

    By Jessica Ravitz, CNN
    If you thought you had less than three perfectly healthy months to live, what would you do? We tag along with a faithful crew that's walked away from work and families, and kicked possessions to the curb. They've done it all, they say, because Judgment Day is near and they must warn the masses.

About 

    Jessica Ravitz's reporting has taken her on a road trip with a doomsday group, into untold stories of rape during the Holocaust and to the doorstep of the original Siri, a discovery she made by mistake.

    Since joining CNN in January 2009, Ravitz has been the recipient of a number of awards, including a National Headliner Award for online-only writing, a Society for Features Journalism award, the Jane Cunningham Croly Award for Excellence in Journalism Covering Issues of Concern to Women and an American Academy of Religion Award for Best In-Depth Newswriting on Religion.

    Before coming to CNN, Ravitz was a religion and feature writer at The Salt Lake Tribune in Salt Lake City, Utah, where her work received regional and national recognition.

    A native of Detroit, Ravitz earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree in journalism at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.