O'Brien leaves Wired for Fortune

Jeffrey M. O’Brien, previously at Wired where he was a senior editor, is leaving that publication for a job at Fortune, where he will also be a senior editor.

Based in the magazine’s offices in San Francisco, O’Brien will divide his time between writing and editing stories about the intersection of science, technology, business and society.

While at Wired, O’Brien wrote and edited more than a dozen cover stories for the magazine. When Wired won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence (500,000 to 1 million circulation), in 2005, he edited two of the three cover stories submitted—a prescient piece on the Intelligent Design movement and an on-the-ground feature about how IT outsourcing is changing India.

Two stories he edited were recently selected for The Best American Science Writing 2006 and The Best American Technology Writing 2006. As a writer, his riveting profile of inventor and cave explorer Bill Stone was selected for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2005.

O’Brien grew up in Connecticut and is a graduate of the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. He took the reins of his first magazine at 22, a trade publication covering the international home textile industry. At 26, he moved to San Francisco and became editor-in-chief of a monthly Adweek publication called Marketing Computers. During his editorship, the magazine won the Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism award for best single-topic issue.

O’Brien is currently in England completing a Templeton-Cambridge fellowship in science and religion.