Washington Post econ columnist Long joining Navy Federal

Heather Long

Washington Post economics columnist Heather Long is leaving the newspaper to become the chief economist for the Navy Federal Credit Union.

She has been a 24/7 columnist focused on the U.S. economy, writing about workers, businesses, corporate leaders and more. Long will continue to write a monthly column for The Post. In 2024, Long won a Gerald Loeb Award for commentary.

Long joined The Post in 2017 as the lead U.S. economic correspondent. She led coverage of the Trump tax cuts and trade wars, the Federal Reserve, and the pandemic recession.

She was among the first to identify the “K shaped” recovery and the Great Reassessment of work. Before coming to The Post, she worked for CNN as senior economic reporter and editor and served as the opinion editor of her hometown paper, The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.

Long is a graduate of Wellesley College and Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She has served on the boards of Wellesley College and Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa.

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.