Mary Williams Walsh became a reporter for the Business/Financial Desk of The New York Times in 2000.

Her 2002 reports, with Walt Bogdanich and Barry Meier, on the way two companies cornered a market for drugs and medical supplies for many hospitals, inflating prices and sometimes leading to the distribution of inferior products, won a George Polk Award for health care reporting. The same series of reports was also a finalist for the 2003 Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business and financial journalism.

Before coming to The Times, Ms. Walsh was a foreign correspondent for The Los Angeles Times from 1989-98, reporting from various locations in Europe, Africa and North America. She was a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal from 1985-89, reporting from Latin America and South and Southeast Asia; she started working for that paper as a general assignment reporter in 1983.

Born in Wausau, Wis., on Dec. 1, 1955, Ms. Walsh graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1979 with degrees in English and French.

Ms. Walsh was a Walter Bagehot fellow in economics and business journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business during the 1982-83 academic year. She was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University during the 1998-99 academic year. Her reports from Europe for The Los Angeles Times received the Overseas Press Club of America citation for excellence in 1995.

She is married with two children and lives in Philadelphia.