William Turvill of Press Gazette interviewed Financial Times editor in chief Roula Khalaf about her career.
Turvill writes, “Khalaf moved to New York for university, studying at Syracuse and Columbia. After graduation, she started her career at business magazine Forbes in the early 1990s.
“During this period, she interviewed a young Jordan Belfort, now better known as the Wolf of Wall Street. She identified him as a ‘twisted Robin Hood’, he later described her as an ‘insolent reporter’. Years later, Khalaf was depicted, under the made-up name Aliyah Farran, in Martin Scorsese’s film.
“Khalaf moved to London in 1995 and found a job at the FT. Over the years, she worked her way up through the company, first serving as North Africa correspondent and then Middle East editor for 13 years, a period that included the Arab Spring.
“In 2013, then-editor Lionel Barber promoted her to foreign editor. After my interview with Khalaf, I asked Barber to talk about her rise through the ranks.
“‘Through the Arab Spring, she did an absolutely outstanding job in coordinating the coverage and also writing the main stories and analysis,’ Barber said. ‘She was clearly good at managing people and taking a broad view of the stories.'”
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