Zanny Minton Beddoes – The Economist

The latest office hero we will be looking at is Zanny Minton Beddoes, the woman behind one of the most world renowned magazines, The Economist. Her career is a successful, illustrious and global one in which she worked her way up the newspaper to become the first female editor-in-chief of The Economist, after excelling in her former career.

Beddoes is British and received the majority of her formal education in England. She studied as an undergraduate at Oxford University where she studied philosophy, politics and economics. She then moved to America to study her Master’s degree at Harvard University. This landed her an opportunity with Harvard Professor Jeffrey Sachs after graduating, who she worked for in a small team as an advisor to the Minister of Finance in Poland.

Prior to working with Sachs, Beddoes worked for the International Monetary Fund for two years as an economist. In this role, she worked on various economic projects in Africa and Eastern Europe. It was after this time, in 1994, that Beddoes joined The Economist as their emerging markets correspondent, during which time she was based in London. This role involved a lot of travel, around Latin America and Eastern Europe in particular, to write editorials and analyses of different countries.

In April 1996, Beddoes relocated to Washington D.C. when she became the Economics editor for The Economist. This role had her overseeing the global economics coverage of the newspaper. Her final role before becoming editor-in-chief was as Business Affairs editor. In this role she was responsible for the business, finance and science coverage of the newspaper.

On 2nd February 2015, Beddoes became the 17th editor-in-chief of The Economist, and the first ever woman to hold this position. To this day, she is considered as one of the most influential journalists in finance. Much of her writing on financial affairs has been published in various journals and books, and she has even edited a book on the future of emerging markets in Asia.

Her hard work and talent has got her to the top of her career at a major global publication, and hopefully there are many more years to come for her in this position.