Roland De Wolk is a San Francisco Bay Area-based author. His most recent (coming late 2026) work is Rum, Roulette & the Righteous: An American Epic of Vice, Virtue & Vengeance (Bancroft Press).

Roland has spent the vast majority of his career as an award-winning investigative reporter. He has, often concurrently, been a major market broadcast news producer, and a San Francisco State University Senior Lecturer in journalism.

Roland is the author of several books, including American Disruptor: The Scandalous Life of Leland Stanford. Among many kudos, it has been called “A wonderful read. Well written and extremely well documented.” (Bruce Cain, Director of the Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University).

De Wolk spent the first half of his professional career as a print journalist, both for daily newspapers and magazines across the United States and Europe. He spent the second half greatly expanding to broadcast and online journalism. He is a founder of one of the first original online university journalism sites in the world.

Roland has won most major citations in his field, including being honored by the Society of Professional Journalists with its Career Achievement Award. He was a long-standing member of Investigative Reporters & Editors, and Committee for Concerned Journalists. He was a member of the New Media Executive Roundtable, and an Inaugural Fellow for the Freedom Forum’s New Media Technologies program. De Wolk is a history graduate of U.C. Berkeley.

The third son of Belgian immigrants, he grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he still lives. He has traveled extensively throughout Africa, Asia, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Rim, Latin and North America.

Roland De Wolk is married to noted political journalist Carla Marinucci. They have two most excellent sons.