The current digital era has made the dissemination of news faster and provided the media industry with the powerful boost it needs. But this fast-paced age of information also led to the diminution of critical thinking, hindering society from unlocking true progress. Kate Byrne discusses how to address this alarming status quo with Amy Bernstein, Editor in Chief of the Harvard Business Review. Together, they talk about the importance of authentic storytelling and the role of media in guiding people on the right way to gather and analyze today’s plethora of information. Amy also shares her strategies for managing her editorial team, how to handle imposter syndrome, and how to navigate tech innovations to constantly deliver balanced news stories.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
What Happened To Critical Thinking Today With Amy Bernstein
What is the role of the media? What happened to the lost art of critical thinking? With more women taking on leadership and senior editorial helms of key global brands such as the New York Times, the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Inc., and Fast Company, how will the way we see the world and its stories shift? These are some of the questions I delved into with Amy Bernstein, Editor in Chief of the Harvard Business Review. We talk about leading teams and navigating the needs of that multi-generational team. There are many takeaways here with one standing out with regards to owning your mic. Tune in and see if you know what it is. Better yet, do you practice it?
Amy Bernstein, Editor in Chief of the Harvard Business Review and so many other extraordinary talents, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
I love this because Amy and I have known each other. I’m not going to say how long.
25 years.
Amy said it. We’ve lived a lot of media and we’ve lived a lot of life and breakthroughs. We started off in San Francisco. Now, we’re both out here on the East Coast. Amy is up in Massachusetts and me down here in Charlottesville, Virginia. Who would’ve thunk?
Who would’ve guessed that?
Amy’s Origin Story And Career Journey
Trust me. Queen of the random, I own that. I am that. I don’t know the whole origin story. Share a little bit about how you got to where you are and some of the little steps along the way. I don’t know if you’ve probably seen this, but as people are getting ready to graduate, going to college, or whatever, everyone always feels like, “I’ve got to make this decision right because if I don’t, it’s all over.” That’s so not true. Life is one big zigzag.
There are very few irrevocable decisions when you’re talking about careers. Haven’t you found that?
If anyone has found that, it’s me. I am the cat of twenty lives. Forget nine. I finished those long ago.
I certainly never set out to be here where I am, editing Harvard Business Review. I have been a journalist since I graduated from college. That was random as well. I wanted to teach Latin and Greek but my mom convinced me to try working for a year before going to graduate school. She was right to do that. I loved working at CBS News and being in the middle of the newsgathering. I found that incredibly exciting. That was a few decades ago.
I hopped around. I got into magazines when I was about 28 working for US News & World Report. I then started working at a startup magazine called Brill’s Content, which had a brief but spectacular life in the late ‘90s. It was founded by Steven Brill of Court TV and American Lawyer fame. I looked at media news and the business of media, and I loved doing that. I loved the startup world and I loved business. I was a babe in the woods in business reporting but I learned a lot. You can’t help learning a lot if you work for Steven Brill. It was a journalistic boot camp.
My partner who got a job out in San Francisco, and all of this was on the East Coast, was the Creative Director for the San Francisco Examiner and then the Chronicle, so I had to find a job out in San Francisco. That’s where I met you in 1999. With The Industry Standard, talk about your brief but spectacular lives. We had fun. We rode the highest highs and crashed to the lowest lows in 2001. What an adventure.
All of this was a learning experience. I’ve learned in the course of this that it’s how you tell your story. It’s not as cynical of how you tell your story. It’s how you take all these experiences and make them up to something. In the middle of the crash of 2001, I started working for Business 2.0, which was Time Inc.’s answer to the Industry Standard, Red Herring, and all those Internet economy magazines.
From there, I hopped over to a thought leadership quarterly published by Booz Allen. It was called Strategy + Business. I’d never heard of the term thought leadership, and I’m still running away from it. That got me into the world of management theory, which was interesting. There’s a lot of nonsense but there’s a lot of brilliant thinking there. When it’s good, it’s very good. I then went to work in the industry. I went to work for Manpower and learned a lot about business and a lot about how business leaders use ideas. It was a company that thought a lot about why it does what it does. It tries to take a long-term view, which is admirable.
I was offered the chance to interview for the job of editing HBR and I took it. Here I am, and I’ve been for thirteen years. It has been an incredibly enriching run, not necessarily financially, but it’s been exciting, fun, and interesting. Every week, I feel like I’m a little bit smarter than I was when I started the week. At the end of every week, I feel a little smarter.
It’s amazing. I had forgotten some of those other commonalities with Business 2.0.
Do we have that in common too?
I was there for New York Minute. When we had the dive that was the standard, I had gone over to eCompany Now/Business 2.0. I stayed there briefly, but that’s when I made my jump to Fast Company.
You worked at Fast Company. In the pool of Internet economy magazine talent, it was inevitable we would run into each other, especially out in San Francisco,
I found it hard going from the upstart entrepreneurial thing that was the standard. Even though it was part of IDG, it didn’t feel like it. We hung the pirate’s flag. Good thing or a bad thing, not so sure, but we did it anyway.
They were over Boston. We were in San Francisco.
The kids were out playing. What happened was with Business 2.0, it was interesting going into Time Inc. who was a little late in the game. I remember their first cover of eCompany Now and it was a pool.
It wasn’t just a pool. It was a kiddie pool.
The next week when we announced it. It was already done. It was over. I remember it was symptomatic of what ended up happening in the long run. It was a fascinating time to be a part of that. It was so much fun being a part of history.
It was heady. Also, the kind of success we were having when we were successful, I remember saying to myself, “I cannot take this for granted.”
I knew I was onto something when I left Businessweek to go to The Industry Standard. I still think of Businessweek as dear family. However, I remember being very flattered because we had so many ads. I have a little thing that says we broke history. No one has come near how many ads we had in the issues of the publishing industry bureau. What happened was I closed the issues down because they were getting so thick and it was such a bad reader experience. We were ticking off advertisers.
We were thinking of how to create more edit pages because there’s a minimum percentage of pages that have to be edited, not to be a catalog, and get charged at a different rate.
Essential Skills In Amy’s Early Career
We learned a lot about the business itself. We capped it and then it was brilliant because we were able to push everybody into future issues, and then Businessweek started following suit. I thought, “We’re onto something here.” It all shifted and went away. A question for you is were there certain skills that you would say that you relied on in the early days? Are they any different than the ones you lean on now or is it all the same in an older version?
A lot of the skills that have helped me over the years were skills that I had to develop back when you and I were at The Standard. I bet you found the same thing. We talk a lot about skills, so the meaning of it is getting a little fuzzy. It is being able to maintain your sense of humor when the highs seem very high and the lows seem very low and being able to get a grip and not take yourself too seriously. I don’t know if you recall, but there were a lot of people out there in the heady days of 2000 or so who took themselves pretty seriously.
Maintain your sense of humor during the high and low points of life. Always learn how to not take yourself too seriously. Share on XSome looked the other way and then ended up getting arrested. At the end of the day, business is still business. You could weave a good tale but it still has to make a profit. For me, in the early days, that was important because there were so many people, especially in our industry. It’s all storytelling.
It’s something else. It’s knowing the fundamental physics of business. It’s knowing that you can’t keep touting that you’re pre-profit and you’re going to join forces with another pre-profit company, and suddenly, that’s going to solve that problem. Negative gross margins are not a good thing.
I finally started asking everyone, “What’s your business model? How are you making money?” They said, “We’re working on that. All we know is that our investor said that we had to run in your magazine.”
It was uncool to ask that question. It was like, “You don’t get it, do you? It’s not always about making money.” It is.
You can make money and change the world. You can have a purpose. Those are two things. Money is a good thing but you have to be smart with it. That’s something that I see a lot. You either have the people who are like, “Money is bad. It’s evil,” and that’s a whole other rabbit hole that we won’t go down but there is a lot of that,” or purpose-driven who are like, “I want to save the world,” etc. Guess what? It can be both-and. Ideally, it would be both-and.
I have a challenge. I take challenges with a lot of nonprofits. Just because you’re a nonprofit doesn’t mean you shouldn’t run that nonprofit with a good business sensibility. Otherwise, you may be helping but in the long run, you’re draining. Often, people are starting their own thing. I swear, if you looked around, there might be something like it already exists. Maybe go and add your efforts, your skills, and everything to it. If it needs to change, then go ahead. Do it there. I feel that here down in Charlottesville. In general, it has changed so much. You did magazines. You did weeklies. You did monthlies.
I did weeklies, monthlies, and quarterlies. A couple of them were the web person. Anyone who had a 386 could do it.
Insights On The Current Shifts In Media
What are some of the shifts that you’re seeing in the media on your end? You’ve been at HBR. They had a digital presence but they’ve built it up. The magazine is beautiful. I read the issue that had interesting stuff about AI but also talked about team building. That was such a good issue. I kept thinking, “I’ll read a few,” and honestly, I read almost every single article. It felt so good. It’s been a while since I’ve held a magazine. I won’t lie.
We lean into what makes the magazine a great experience. We’re lucky. Magazines have had a hard row to hoe. The balance of our efforts is shifting digital. They have been for years. It’s the right thing to do. It’s how people get their information. Broadly, it’s important for us to remember that in the pool of competition or the field of competition, our competitors are not just other media outlets. It’s any way that people spend their time. That also affects their expectations.
In eCommerce, Amazon sets a high watermark. We all have to get up there with the consumer experience. In media, it’s YouTube, Netflix, and whatever people are listening to on Spotify. No one is saying, “HBR doesn’t have to deliver a podcast experience that’s that great.” They’re all saying, “If I’m going to be listening to this, it has to be at least as engaging as what I could be listening to on Spotify.”
You’re right. It also speaks to the way that you have to meet your consumer, the reader, or the audience where they’re at. That could be audio, visual, reading, or experiential.
It’s not either-or. It’s and. We have to remind ourselves that the unit of analysis cannot be the article. For us, it has to be the idea. We have to find ways to make that idea compelling, urgent, and relevant to our subscribers who are our customers in a variety of ways, in ways that are as useful as possible to them at the moment. That’s why we cannot say, “This is a magazine article. It can’t be a podcast.” It’s a podcast. It’s a five-minute video thing. We have experimented with all the platforms.
You’re determining, “Which aspect of the story is best told, best shared, and best teased up based on the type of content outlet?”
Additionally, it’s always, “What would our subscriber need?” The best aspect of the story for the medium is very much shaped by the needs of our subscribers.
The best medium for every news story is very much shaped by the needs of its subscribers. Share on XRole Of Media In Modern Society
With everything that has been going on with the election and has been for a long time, you’ve heard people saying, “Media is jumping all over. They’re either telling too much of the story or they’re telling the wrong parts of the story.”
It could also be like, “They’re telling parts of the story that don’t comport with my version of the story.”
What do you think the role of media can play moving forward? Is it different from what it is now?
Let’s separate journalism as a subgroup of media.
That’s a good point. That’s fair.
The job of journalism has not changed. It’s to surface the truth. It’s to tell stories that need to be told. It’s to hold the powerful to account. That has never changed. It is not to push an agenda. I believe this strongly. There are rarely two equal sides. First of all, there are rarely two sides. No matter how many sides, they’re rarely equal in terms of their veracity and their consequence. You got to keep the True North there for yourself.
Talk about no mission creep, quite honestly.
Your mission has to be something about delivering the truth.
Addressing The Diminution Of Critical Thinking
Whether people want to hear it or not. What about critical thinking? That’s the other thing. What’s the responsibility of the audience? People are looking at things and reading things. You have to stop for a second, take a step back, and go, “Are you kidding me? How could you even think that was true?”
Did you and I talk about this when we chatted?
I don’t know.
It’s something I think about all the time. We’ve seen such a diminution of critical thinking in a moment when we need it most because we are so easily manipulated. It’s not because you saw it on TV that it makes it true. It’s not because you saw it on the internet that it makes it true. That power that we have is a human superpower that says, “There is this text on my phone telling me that there is a package waiting for me, and if I give them my social security number, they’ll get this package to me.” That’s critical thinking that says maybe to not hit that link.
Where is the skepticism? Where is the part where you are supposed to show your figuring before you give an answer? It is like, “I know what you are saying but how did you get there?” It’s not just on the part of the consumers. I see it with journalists as well. You can’t accept what everyone says at face value or you shouldn’t.
Gone are the follow-up questions.
Gone are the follow-up questions. Why was that a good thing?
I don’t know. That is something that has struck me watching the debates in general. I was thinking, “There’s a chance right there.” It doesn’t even have to be pointed. It’s even open.
They kept saying, “It’s not fair. You fact-check this person more than that person.” Someone told more lies.
That’s what that is. There’s a truth or consequence. That’s what that means right there.
It’s a serious lack of courage, frankly. I see it all over. Some of us are going to get canceled, and maybe we’ll get canceled by people we don’t need to be in contact with anyway. The lack of comedy is upsetting. The idea that we can agree to disagree agreeably or whatever that line is, there’s a lot of virtue in that. We should be hearing all sides.
I completely agree. That’s also where discernment comes in and freedom of thought to a degree.
There is a whole idea that the whole world is a good versus evil struggle and you’re either X or Y. There are a lot of things in between.
It’s a lot of smush. It’s a lot of gray. I agree.
When something seems so easy and so clean, chances are it’s probably a little reductive.
When something seems so easy and clean, chances are it is probably a little reductive. Share on XI would agree. That usually means someone was good at sticking to their talking points. That’s the whole story. One thing I have learned is often what is left unsaid can be even more important.
You’re so right. That’s also where critical thinking comes in. You should always be asking, “Does this story add up?”
Using Tech Innovation Responsibly
You should always be asking, “Does this ring true? Where does this land?” With all that, there are exciting things and interesting things. You were even talking about the whole notion of critical thinking and all of the human mind. Many people are worried that AI’s going to take over, be horrible, and all of that. This is one way if you stay in the game and critically think. Humanity is unique. That’s something AI can’t do. Apply that superpower that we have. Many people roll on their backs and go, “I’m going to be taken over by the machine.”
I feel like we forget that we are the shapers of our own lives. You can’t give up your personal sovereignty like that. Every puff of wind shouldn’t knock you over. Sometimes, they’re salutary. I completely agree with you on this. The whole Copilot idea, Microsoft owns that word, but it’s a good metaphor for how my colleagues are using AI. I haven’t been using it that much but a lot of people I work with have been using it, and it has been great. It’s limited. You have to understand the limitations. It’s like any tool. It can be used for harm or it can be used for good.
We often forget that we are the shapers of our own lives and our personal sovereignty. Every puff of wind should not knock you over. Share on XThat’s been true with the media from the get-go back in the ‘40s and ‘30s. That’s always been true. Pick your technology.
Yuval Noah Harari said this. I’m going to steal the idea. The printing press was a net gain for humanity, but some weird stuff has come off the printing press, like some QAnon stuff with witches and so forth. A lot of conspiracy theories were being distributed. Thanks to the printing press, they got a broader audience and a lot more followership hundreds of years ago. The simplistic manicky ways of envisioning our future seem reductive to me as if they’re missing hidden threats and equally hidden opportunities.
Bigger Opportunities For Women In Media
One of the things that struck me is there are some power player females running media entities or the platform or holding the megaphone. I think of you. I think of the New York Times. I think of Jena over at Forbes. I think of Stephanie Mehta at Fast Company. I think of Inc. It’s interesting to me. For the person who’s holding that megaphone, will that shift at all the lenses through which certain subjects are looked at, stories are delivered, or conversations are had?
I think so because women, broadly speaking, tend to think a little differently about relationships and the world.
There’s a different sensibility. That’s the word.
These broad brush strokes are reductive, but people from different backgrounds are shaped by different dynamics. That is true. The experience of being a White woman in 2024 with my background and your background is different from the background and the dynamics that shaped someone who did not grow up with the kind of privilege that I did or the kind of privilege that you did. That shapes the frame through which you see the world and understand how it works. It’s why it is so incredibly important for us to talk, share those views, and understand why we think the way we do. It’s not because I think differently from that person over there that it makes her wrong or me right. It’s just different.
That goes back to that whole gray thing. There’s so much value to that difference, I believe. From a business, it’s how you make better products that match more people.
You have much better decisions that way. You make better products. Your teams function better. It takes a lot of skill to weave in the different perspectives and to make sure that you’re hearing from everyone you need to hear from as a leader, or so I’ve heard from HBR.
It takes tremendous self-awareness, self-accountability, and humility. I have my own bias. Whether I like to think I don’t, we all do because of the point you brought up earlier. I can’t tell you how many times I catch myself or certain assumptions are made. It’s part of my life being seeped in all of this, and it’s still there. I always think, “That’s part of that humility. There’s still stuff I need to work on.”
It sounds like as you’ve gotten older, you’ve learned to shut up more.
That’s where sharing the mic comes in. What I’ve caught and realized that I did historically, and I probably still do sometimes too, is when in a group of people and there’s a conversation and people are talking, and then they’re coming down and are like, “Does anybody else have something to say?” It is fighting the urge to say, “I do.” I always have to say, “Of course, you do.” Is it going to add value? Is it adding more value to you and your ego saying, “I’ve got stuff. I’m contributing,” or is it, “Stop.”
I learned this thing. It’s an editing principle I learned from one of the most wonderful editors I ever worked for named Mike Ruby. It is such an important principle. Before you make a change when you’re editing, ask yourself whether you are making it better or you are making it different. That applies to me in so many different contexts beyond editing.
If you’re going to open your mouth and take up time in a meeting, you better ask yourself, “Am I adding to the conversation? Am I moving us in a different direction or am I making sure my voice is heard?” I also want to pause and say for people in senior positions, we have the luxury of asking that question. A lot of times, particularly for young women, being heard is a challenge. I have to think through what that means for them.
Having spoken to founders and others, it is that whole notion of speaking up and being shot down, the role that plays in helping them become more resilient, knowing when to jump in and when to not, and when to speak truth to power. That was always a little tricky part I had.
I have heard you speak truth to power a few times, and every time you did it, I thought, “She is fabulous.”
Thank you. There’s a way to do it. I’m more finessed at it.
You’re being very humble. I saw you doing it and you always had the honesty and the diplomacy to carry it off.
What It Is Like To Manage Different Generations Of People
Thank you. Speaking of diplomacy, how about managing all those different generations?
It’s interesting. This is where I have to check myself because there are times when I’m like, “I’m not sure a sleep pod is what the organization owes you.” Do you know that line from Mad Men when Peggy, a young copywriter, is complaining to Don Draper, her boss, that she’s not getting credit for something that she did and how come she doesn’t get the credit? He leans over and shouts, “That’s what the money is for.” Sometimes, I feel like saying that.
I know. What I want everyone to remember, because I have done this myself, is this whole notion of, “Folks have been in the job for six months or maybe a year. It’s time for recognition and a title.”
They’re like, “If I’m not getting it today, can I please have a timeline?” The answer is always going to be, “Absolutely not. I’m not making promises I can’t keep.”
The truth of the matter, everybody, is that as much as we want to say all organizations are flattening whatever, there is still a learning curve and there are still things one needs to learn and get under their belt. When you’re put in a different larger position, you’re going to face stuff that you haven’t and you’re not going to know what the heck to do. Especially what you’re not expecting is when all of a sudden, you shift from a peer to your peer’s boss. There’s a whole lot of mental acrobatics and relational situations that are not always comfortable.
Those are the skills that do carry you through. The technical skills are very easy. Your kids are learning new computer languages online.
They’re native to it.
The hard stuff is relational skills. They used to be called soft skills but for some reason, we’re not allowed to use that term anymore. It’s the ability to navigate difficult conversations, the ability to read a room, and the ability to communicate what needs to be heard in a way that makes it hearable to the right people. You need those skills at every step of your career. Most of us aren’t born with them. That takes a lot of seasoning.
It’s the whole notion of responding versus reacting.
The other part is understanding the relationship between employee and employer. An organization owes a lot to its employees. It needs to be able to hold onto them. It needs to do that by developing them and giving them the kinds of recognition, rewards, feedback, or whatever form it takes that keeps them moving and feeling engaged.
The organization is not your parent. It’s not your family. Something that we were a little guilty of way back in the day is it’s not a good substitute for your real community. Work is a real community but it’s not family. It’s not friends. It’s not the church. It’s not your neighborhood. It’s not the things that you have to pay attention to and that will give back to you a thousand times over.
That’s a sure way to get in and find yourself in an incredible imbalance. I keep thinking of all those different HR graphs where it’s a whole circle and it has your health and all these different sectors. You want the whole wheel filled out. I can’t remember what 360 mechanism we used. There were parts of the circle that were left empty and it was horrific. It’s one of those things where you’ll feel better too because it all changes. As long as you’re grounded and aligned, there’s no substitute for that. Everyone I know is anxious. That’s one way to de-anxiousize yourself.
It’s a form of humility. It’s figuring out where you stand in a situation, not getting high on your own supply, and knowing that the highs are never as high as they feel they are and the lows are never as low as you think they are when you’re in the middle of panicking about something. It’s being able to keep yourself steady. It’s self-regulation. It’s a part of emotional intelligence.
That’s true. That’s one of the things that when you make that transition early into a career or into a new workplace and leaving a familiar workplace and going to the next one, remember there is that little transition phase and it feels funny. It’s supposed to. It’s new. Some people will say it’s imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is when you feel weird because you’re in a new spot and you’re not familiar. It doesn’t mean you’re not supposed to be there. It means it’s new. Be patient with yourself and give yourself a shot to catch up and figure out what you don’t know. You’re going to make mistakes, and that happens forever. Ask my daughters. They’ll let you know I make many mistakes.
Experts make mistakes all the time. It doesn’t mean they’re not experts. We all make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. Mistakes are usually not fatal. It’s how you respond to the mistake that says a lot about your character.
Amy’s Advice To Her Younger Self And Closing Words
In closing, I want to know what advice you would give yourself. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self?
We’ve both been asked this question. I used to think the answer was, “Don’t worry so much.” I then realized, and this is connected to what you were talking about, that what I would say to myself is, “Don’t worry about whether or not you belong there. You belong. You belong wherever you are. You don’t need permission. Just because you’re not the very best at something doesn’t mean you don’t belong.”
That’s terrific advice because you’re there.
It’s your opportunity to learn. In my twenties, thirties, forties, and certainly at the turn of my fifties, I was waiting for people to validate me in ways I don’t even care about anymore.
There’s so much of that. Looking for external validation, you have to look here. You got to know. Yeah. Guess what? If you’re doing great stuff, there are going to be some people who still won’t give you the external validation.
It’s about them. I say to myself all the time, “It’s not about me.” Most of the time when people are misbehaving, it’s about them. It’s not about you. If you can keep that in mind, you won’t be knocked over every time someone looks at you the wrong way.
Most of the time when people misbehave, it is about them and not you. If you keep that in mind, you cannot be knocked over every time someone looks at you the wrong way. Share on XThat’s so true. We’ve all had those nights where something has happened and we toss, turn, worry, and wring our hands. We’re freaking out. We’re like, “What are they going to think? What have they thought? I did this,” or, “I didn’t do this.” My dad always helped bring me back to Earth and would say, “I hate to tell you this. They’re not thinking about you.”
Your dad’s a wise man.
He was like, “They’re thinking about themselves.” I am here to tell you decades later that it’s true. Cut yourself a little slack.
You’re not the only thing other people are thinking about.
They might have a few other things. I could go on and on with you. I’m going to figure out a way for us to be on a panel or something together. I have to figure this out.
I’d love that.
Thank you so much for everything. Everyone, thanks for tuning in.
Important Links
About Amy Bernstein
Amy Bernstein is the Editor in Chief of Harvard Business Review, where she oversees the magazine and its team of editors. The magazine has won numerous editorial awards since she joined, including Folio’s Magazine of the Year for 2019, and was a finalist in 2015 and 2021 for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence. In 2016, Amy was named one of Folio’s Top Women in Media.
Amy is also the Vice President and Executive Editorial Director for Harvard Business Publishing. In this cross-enterprise role she leads the editorial strategy and content development of the company’s learning and educator assets.
Before joining HBR in 2011, she was Vice President, Global Thought Leadership, at ManpowerGroup, the global employment-services company. There she oversaw Manpower’s signature Employment Outlook Survey and led development of white papers on emerging trends in the world of work. She also launched MyPath, the industry’s first career-management website for professionals, and led the redesign of the company’s network of websites.
Prior to her stint at ManpowerGroup, Bernstein held senior editorial positions on both the print and digital sides at a variety of magazines including strategy+business, Business 2.0, The Industry Standard, Brill’s Content, and U.S. News & World Report. She has developed and edited stories across the full range of business, tech, and management topics, contributing to several Loeb and National Magazine Award winners. Her roles have included leadership of both print and digital products. And she has cohosted HBR’s Women at Work podcast since its inception 2018. She began her career at CBS News as a researcher.
She has served as president of the Journalism and Women Symposium, a national organization that supports the professional empowerment and personal growth of women in journalism and works toward a more accurate portrayal of the whole society. And she served as chair of the Editorial Advisory Board of the San Francisco Bay Citizen, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, member-supported news organization dedicated to promoting innovation in journalism and catalyzing citizen engagement with the news. She is a graduate of Yale College.