Bloomberg News Executive Editor Winnie O’Kelley Joins Columbia As Professor of Business Journalism

Columbia Journalism School announced today that Winnie O’Kelley, an award-winning editor with long experience at Bloomberg and The New York Times, will join the school’s faculty as Professor of Business Journalism. O’Kelley will lead the Business and Economics concentration of the Master of Arts program, which provides mid-career journalists the expertise needed to cover corporations and the economy with sophistication.

"Winnie's knowledge of business is broad and deep and she has an inspiring record of successfully mentoring young and developing reporters," said Steve Coll, Dean of Columbia Journalism School and Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism. "She brings with her strong ideas about evolving our program for the era of disruption and rapidly changing technology that is all around us, and which makes business journalism such an exciting field."

For more than a decade, the M.A. program has offered experienced journalists an opportunity to deepen their subject-area expertise in one of four concentrations:  arts & culture, business & economics, politics and science. Students in the M.A. Business concentration develop a firm grasp of economic theory, learn how to analyze economic data, and study markets, corporations, controversies and regulation. They also hone their ability to tell exciting stories about business subjects, whether as news or narrative. As part of their academic year, they take electives in other schools and departments and produce an in-depth magazine-style story about business or economics.

“Never has the mission been clearer for a financial journalist,” O’Kelley said. “To follow the money and hold the powerful accountable while also educating the public about the true impact of government policy and corporate behavior is a critical need worldwide in an era of global fraud.”

O’Kelley is an industry veteran known for her outstanding journalistic career as an editor on business and finance, with a specialty in economic impact and corporate wrongdoing.

She served as executive editor for Bloomberg News covering government, legal issues and financial regulation. In this role, she managed several hundred journalists around the world, overseeing news and enterprise stories at the intersection of power and business, including financial fraud, cybersecurity and privacy and health care fraud.  Additionally, she was executive editor of the Washington bureau.

More recently, she created a global financial investigations team that covers everything from Russian money laundering and sanctions violations to corporate accounting shenanigans and collusion. O’Kelley, who will continue in that role, is also a regular guest on Bloomberg TV, providing context and analysis on the latest financial headlines.

Prior to Bloomberg, O’Kelley worked for 20 years at The New York Times, where she held several leadership roles.  She was David Kocieniewski’s editor on his Pulitzer Prize-winning series on tax avoidance, “But Nobody Pays That.”  As the deputy business editor, she managed the paper’s coverage of the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath.

She has also been an adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism School.

In 2012, O’Kelley received the Lawrence Minard Editor Award, a Gerald Loeb recognition for lifetime achievement.  She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University.