Museum of American Finance to honor Fortune’s Loomis

The Museum of American Finance, the nation’s only independent museum dedicated to finance and financial history, will honor the achievements of Fortune magazine journalist Carol Loomis at its annual gala on March 13.

Loomis will receive a special recognition honor for her groundbreaking contributions to the field of financial journalism and unprecedented 60-year tenure at Fortune magazine. Loomis will be introduced by Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, via video.

In addition to reporting on a wide range of financial and corporate news, Loomis is known for profiles of business luminaries like Buffett and Sandy Weill, and for cover stories such as “Everything In History Was Against Them” (April 13, 1998), an evocative tale of five Holocaust survivors who came to America and became successful businessmen. “Fortune has published thousands of success stories since its first issue nearly 70 years ago, but none has been as compelling as this week’s cover story on the business breakthroughs of five Holocaust survivors,” said the New York Post.

Loomis has won three lifetime achievement awards: the Gerald M. Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award in 1993, the Women’s Economic Round Table award in 2000 for print journalists, of which she was the first recipient, and Time Inc.’s Henry R. Luce Award in 2001, of which she was also the first recipient.

In 1976, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury appointed Loomis to the Advisory Committee on Federal Consolidated Financial Statements. In 1980, she served as one of six panelists questioning presidential candidates Ronald Reagan and John Anderson in a nationally televised debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters.

In 2000, Loomis won a “Front Page” award from the Newswomen’s Club of New York for her story “Lies, Damned Lies, and Managed Earnings,” which anticipated the financial scandals that rocked the U.S. markets. In 2001, she returned to the same theme in an article called “The 15% Delusion.”