Business Journalism

"Is this important?" I asked my editor, holding up for him a fever chart that I would later learn showed a stock's undulating performance. This was 1998, when I first attempted business writing, armed with a stack of mostly frothy clips, a willingness to try and an almost-complete certificate in management from the University of Rochester.

Fast-forward a few months, and you'd never guess I'd been clueless. Credit the hours I spent in front of the magical Bloomberg machine — which at first terrified me but eventually bent to my will — and that patient editor at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, who taught me to read an earnings report and not nod off during the legal disclaimers. I quickly became a leading writer on the business desk, winning awards for my coverage of entrepreneurship, economic development and the high cost of air travel in upstate New York.

About two years later I was hired to write about banking and finance for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I took on other beats there — small business, the tech bust, retail — before serving as an editor, managing six-person teams of reporters and remembering to be charitable to newbies who couldn't figure out how to calculate percent change.

I went freelance in 2006, and since then I've written business stories for a lot of different publications, including Atlanta Magazine, the Bond Buyer and the Real Deal. I also write about emerging markets debt for Prospect News, which means I now understand terms like "greenshoe option" and "equity clawback." That might not make me a huge hit at dinner parties. But that knowledge, along with the other things I've learned during nearly 16 years as a business writer, makes me uniquely poised to not just write business articles, but to bring to other assignments an eagerness to understand, a comfort with data and a reminder that the best stories often meld the hard with the soft.

Areas of Expertise

Clients, past and present

Selected Business Writing Samples