Dante Chinni directs the American Communities Project, an effort that uses demographic data to break the nation's 3,100 counties into 15 types of communities. He also works as a reporter and data analyst for the Wall Street Journal. 

Chinni’s work explores the divides in America by studying how demographic differences affect community economics, culture and politics. That work was the focus of Our Patchwork Nation, available from Gotham Books, and is the backbone of work the Project has done for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on the state of health in America and on the nation’s rural communities as well as a grant from the Arthur Blank Foundation studying Deaths of Despair. Currently the Project is in the middle of a three-year grant exploring American fragmentation for RWJF. 

Chinni has been a journalist for more than 30 years with stints at Newsweek, the Christian Science Monitor and the Project for Excellence in Journalism. His work on Patchwork Nation won the prestigious Knight Batten Award for Journalistic Innovation. He grew up outside Detroit and graduated from Michigan State University, where he majored in journalism and history. He lives in Washington DC with his wife, Christina.