Gretchen Morgenson is assistant business and financial editor and a columnist at the New York Times.  She joined the staff of the Times covering the world financial markets in May 1998 after a long career at Forbes Magazine. Last year she won the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting for her coverage of Wall Street.

Ms. Morgenson is a financial journalist with Wall Street experience.  Her stint as a stockbroker at Dean Witter Reynolds in New York City in the early 1980s gives her stories a depth of knowledge and skepticism uncommon to financial reporting.

Ms. Morgenson began her career in 1976 upon graduation from Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. She landed a job at Vogue Magazine as an editorial assistant; several years later she was writing the personal finance column for the magazine. In 1981 she left Vogue to become a stockbroker. That year, she also co-authored an investing book with Barbara Lee entitled "A Woman's Guide to the Stock Market.'' It was published in hardcover by Harmony Books, in paperback by Ballantine.

After spending three years as a broker, Ms. Morgenson returned to writing in 1984 when she joined Money Magazine as a staff writer. She moved to Forbes in 1986 where she remained until 1993 when she became executive editor of Worth Magazine. She returned to Forbes in August 1995 and the following month became national press secretary to Steve Forbes when he ran for President of the United States. Ms. Morgenson managed Forbes For President press until Mr. Forbes withdrew from the race in March 1996. She then returned to writing and editing at Forbes. She was named assistant managing editor at the magazine in September 1997. She joined the Times eight months later.

Ms. Morgenson is also the author of "Forbes Great Minds of Business,"  a book of five interviews with business leaders published in 1997 by John Wiley & Sons. On-camera versions of the interviews appeared in the fall of 1997 on nationwide public television.

In 2002, Ms. Morgenson won the Gerald Loeb Award for excellence in financial commentary  and in 2000 she won the American University School of Communication's Annual Journalism Award for excellence in personal finance reporting. Ms. Morgenson was also part of the New York Times team that won the Gerald Loeb Award for deadline/ beat reporting for the paper's 1998 articles on the near collapse of Long Term Capital Management, the massive hedge fund whose troubles roiled world financial markets.

Ms. Morgenson lives in New York City with her husband and son.