NerdWallet adds nine to its reporting, editing staff

Personal finance site NerdWallet.com has hired nine new editorial staffers.

They are:

Andrea Coombes has joined NerdWallet as a reporter covering investing. She has been covering personal finance for more than 15 years. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle and other outlets. As personal-finance editor at MarketWatch, she managed a team of staff writers and freelancers to produce award-winning stories and multimedia packages. Coombes has discussed personal finance topics on a variety of TV and radio outlets nationwide, including WTOP, KCBS and NPR’s All Things Considered. She’s won awards from the National Endowment for Financial Education, Society of Professional Journalists and the National Association of Consumer Advocates. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Cal-Berkeley.

Beth Buczynski has joined NerdWallet as a reporter covering insurance. Before joining NerdWallet, she spent several years as a freelance copywriter, editor and blogger with work featured by Salon, Utne Reader and The Christian Science Monitor. She’s also the author of “Sharing is Good,” a book about the sharing economy. Immediately before joining NerdWallet, Buczynski worked as an SEO and social media content specialist. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Tennessee and a master’s degree in public communication and technology from Colorado State University.

Carrie Chilton has joined NerdWallet as a visual designer. Her design and illustration experience includes working with a diverse range of clients and brands. At NerdWallet, she focuses on communicating personal finance concepts in a clear and engaging way. Carrie has a bachelor’s degree in architectural design from Monash University, as well as a graduate diploma in graphic design from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia.

Chanelle Bessette has joined NerdWallet as a reporter covering credit cards. Bessette, who most recently was an editor at another personal finance website, previously was a reporter at Fortune magazine and the Reno Gazette-Journal. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Nevada-Reno.

Chloe Dalby has joined NerdWallet as a motion designer. As a storyteller across media — including visual design, front-end design and animation — Chloe works with NerdWallet’s writers and editors to bring financial coverage to life visually. She was previously an interactive designer at Inkling, an enterprise software company. She graduated from Oberlin College.

Danielle Pignatelli has joined NerdWallet as a senior visual designer. At NerdWallet, she focuses on making personal finance concepts visually compelling and easy to digest. She also provides guidance to other designers. She was previously a senior graphic designer and art director at Hogarth Worldwide, a creative agency that focused on serving Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal. Pignatelli has a bachelor’s in communication design from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.

Kimberly Palmer has joined NerdWallet as a reporter covering credit cards. Palmer, author of “Smart Mom, Rich Mom,” has previously worked at U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. She has an undergraduate degree from Amherst College and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago.

Marilyn Lewis has joined NerdWallet as a reporter covering homeownership and mortgages. For the past decade, she’s worked as a freelance journalist, covering mortgages, real estate and personal finance. Previously, her work in newspapers won numerous awards. Among such coverage, at The San Jose Mercury News she initiated one of the first beats covering demographics, reported on the death of American Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl in Cape Town, South Africa, and contributed to coverage of the 1989 Bay Area earthquake that won the paper’s staff a Pulitzer Prize. She has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Washington and received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Journalists at the University of Michigan and a Herbert J. Davenport Fellowship in Economics and Business Reporting at the University of Missouri.

Robert Beaupre has joined NerdWallet as an assigning editor on investing. Beaupre spent four years editing a variety of personal finance websites at QuinStreet, culminating in a role as senior editorial manager of the company’s insurance sites and managing editor of Insure.com. He then served as an online media manager for the University of Nevada, Reno, writing and optimizing web content for the school’s recruitment efforts. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada, Reno.