After jobs ranging from proofreader, to assistant to Alan Arkin on a couple of productions at Circle in the Square Playhouse, to executive director of the Long Island Sound Taskforce, I was offered a job at CBS Radio News and discovered that my mother had been right after all: I was born to be a journalist.

I did, though, want to move into print journalism, so I went to New York University's Graduate School of Journalism -- from which, despite receiving the Best Graduating Student award, I never got around to graduating. Instead, I got a job at Institutional Investor magazine, where I ended up as editor of the Corporate Financing Week newsletter. A few years later, The Wall Street Journal hired me away to start a corporate finance beat.

I spent 3 ½ years at the Journal and then decided it would be more fun to be a freelancer. I've been freelancing ever since, writing for magazines that range from Mother Jones to Bloomberg Personal Finance (now, alas, defunct) to Newsweek Japan. I'm also a contributor to MSN Money, where I write and appear in a series called Walk the Talk.

In my spare time I walk (particularly in the UK, where I've walked both the Dales Way and the Cotswolds Way), cook (local food wherever possible) and try to grow some of my own, both in our garden and on our roof, where my husband also keeps bees. I'm active in the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in Greenwich Village, in the Park Slope Food Coop, and in the American Society of Journalists and Authors, where I've served on the board.

---