Kao departing FT after more than 8 years

Joanna Kao

Joanna Kao, a data journalist and software developer for The Financial Times, is leaving the publication at the end of the year.

Kao, who was hired in 2016 from Al Jazeera America, and had been steering the technology/development side of FT’s visuals team.

Before Al Jazeera America shut down, Kao worked there as a multimedia reporter and interactive developer covering veterans issues, immigration and homelessness. She also created immersive long-form story templates for the newsroom, experiments with audio storytelling and explored theater-related data in her spare time.

While in college, Kao worked for USA Today, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. She has also helped teach at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the New School.

She has a bachelors degree in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.