Fiona Martin is an award-winning visual journalist with 20+ years of experience translating complex topics into clear, engaging graphics for breaking news and explanatory storytelling. She currently works as a Graphic Artist at The Seattle Times, creating interactives, illustrations, data visualizations, and ArcGIS maps.
Fiona was the lead illustrator for The Seattle Times’ Pulitzer Prize Finalist “Tunnel Vision” investigation into Washington state’s costly removal of salmon barriers. More recently, she contributed to The Seattle Times staff’s Pulitzer Prize Finalist breaking news coverage of the catastrophic December 2025 floods in the Pacific Northwest, producing quick-turn evacuation and flood hazard maps under deadline pressure. Her work has also received honors from the Gerald Loeb Awards, Society for News Design, SPJ Northwest Excellence in Journalism, Best of the West, and the Online Journalism Awards.
Fiona enjoys collaborative projects that push visual storytelling in new creative directions. As a 2025 Climatebase Fellow, Fiona led a capstone project with a dozen other fellows to produce prototypes of climate-themed comics.
Recent speaking engagements include serving as a plenary speaker at a Visual SciComm conference and appearing at Seattle Central Library to discuss her experience illustrating a geology story for The Seattle Times.
Previously, Fiona was Senior Illustration Editor at the nonprofit scientific publisher Annual Reviews, where she trained freelancers and new hires, developed style guidelines, and edited roughly 600 figures annually across 26 academic journals. She also managed the Journal of Natural Science Illustration, the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators’ trade publication, overseeing all aspects of online and print production while leading a diverse volunteer team on Basecamp.
In 2005, Fiona founded Visualizing Science® LLC, providing much-needed science illustration and design services to government agencies, research institutions, publishers, and news outlets. Major clients include NOAA’s Climate Program Office, the National Park Service, High Country News, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Whole Foods Market, Princeton University Press, and researchers and authors affiliated with Harvard, Cambridge, Johns Hopkins, and other institutions.
Fiona has a rare genetic hearing loss and relies on a combination of technology and speech reading in both daily life and professional settings. Her experience navigating a hearing world has shaped the way she approaches communication and visual storytelling.
She grew up in rural northern Arizona and graduated as valedictorian of her small high school class before earning a bachelor’s degree in Marine Science, summa cum laude, along with a graduate certificate in Scientific Illustration from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Fiona lives in the Seattle area with her husband, two children, and dog Neo. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling, gardening, swimming, kayaking, and exploring the waterways of Puget Sound.