Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Fainaru will be the alumnus speaker at graduation on Thursday.

“The purpose of a graduation speaker is to bring someone who is not part of the class or a teacher and put a new perspective on the graduation itself,” said Talia Smith, the senior class representative who first contacted Fainaru.

Fainaru won an International Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his work for the Washington Post on private security contractors in the Iraq War. One of his two books, called Big Boy Rules, is on the same subject matter.

Fainaru said he attributes much of his success to his time at Redwood.

 “[Former Bark advisors] Sylvia Jones and Don Brown were enormous influences in my own decision to become a journalist,” he said. “I went to college to study journalism and I have really never looked back. I don’t know if it weren’t for them if I would have considered journalism as a possible career.”

He also said that the environment at Redwood allowed him to develop a passion for what he does.

“There’s this desire not only to do well at what you dedicate your life to but also to have a really good time doing it,” Fainaru said. “I think I began to learn that at Redwood, if you’re going to do something it’s important to really do well at it but it’s also important to really love what you do.”

Fainaru said he barely remembers his own  graduation ceremony in 1980, but he remembers the feeling he got when it was all over.

 “On the one hand it’s this enormous relief that you have graduated from high school but there’s also this sense of really not knowing what’s next,” Fainaru said. “Once you graduate from high school you can sort of imagine it but you really have no idea. And that’s sort of thrilling and mind blowing.”

Fainaru recently stopped working for the Washington Post to become the managing editor for news at the Bay Citizen, a new online organization that covers the Bay Area, as well as providing stories for the Bay Area addition of the New York Times every Wednesday and Sunday.

According to Smith, when Leadership began looking for a speaker they tried to find a speaker who had been successful after graduating from Redwood as well as someone who had experience with writing or speaking. Smith said they were also looking for someone who was celebrating a significant anniversary of their own graduation. Fainaru, who is celebrating his 30th anniversary of graduation this year, met all of these conditions.