NPR chief business editor Pallavi Gogoi made the following announcement on Thursday:
I’m delighted to announce that Maria Aspan is joining NPR as Finance Correspondent.
Maria comes to us from Fortune magazine, where she is a senior features writer. In her time at Fortune, Maria has broken news and won numerous awards for her work, covering systemic inequities across startups and public companies, executive compensation, the business of health care, sexual harassment on Wall Street, and billionaire philanthropy. She’s interviewed top CEOs for the magazine and at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit and other live events.
Maria has been an editor and financial reporter for most of her career, having covered banking and the financial crisis for American Banker and Reuters. She also oversaw coverage of venture capital and the startup financial ecosystem for Inc. magazine (where she also wrote Startup Money Made Easy, a book of financial advice for entrepreneurs).
Maria has won numerous awards for her coverage, including SPJ’s Sigma Delta Chi award for public service in magazine journalism and also honors from SABEW, NIHCM, NYSSPCA, Deadline Club, Silurians Press Club, and National Headliner Awards. Her work has led to FDA action against Allergan and led billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott to make her secretive donation process more accessible, by allowing nonprofits to formally apply for her grants.
Maria grew up in the Delaware County suburbs of Philadelphia (and is particularly proud of convincing Inc. to let her cover the expanding cult of Wawa). She graduated from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and lived in Paris before settling in New York, where she spends her free time practicing yoga, watching science fiction TV and Broadway theater, and traveling internationally as much as she can.
Maria will start with the Business Desk on July 1. She will be spending some time in Washington, DC, during her onboarding, and we look forward to introducing her to everyone in the newsroom. So thrilled to have Maria join our team. Welcome!!
