I'm passionate about finding novel ways to fill people's need for quality, trustworthy information. That's why I got into journalism, and it's why I was drawn to helping create the Public Insight Network in 2003. I believe PIN preserves the best of the old journalistic values and techniques, while making fullest possible use of new technologies and behaviors.
I started my career as a business reporter at Minnesota Public Radio News and served as a Midwest Correspondent for The Economist for seven years. I'm a 6th-generation Minnesotan, and the 3rd generation of my family to start out in radio journalism. My grandpa was a farm broadcaster at WCCO Radio in Minneapolis (once the juggernaut on the commercial radio spectrum) my dad joined him there as news director -- before moving to the corporate world. From a very young age, I was taken by the notion that a person could speak into a machine, and their words and ideas could affect someone hundreds, even thousands of miles away.
I studied English at to St. John's University (the birthplace of Minnesota Public Radio), graduated from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, and later studied change and innovation at Stanford on a John S. Knight Professional Journalism Fellowship. I'm an excellent swaddler of babies, and have developed a rare two-handed ping pong backhand.
