WaPo biz desk created race and economy beat, hires Tracy Jan

Washington Post economy and business editor David Cho, deputy business editor Zachary Goldfarb and assistant financial editor Simone Sebastian sent out the following staff announcement:

We’re excited to announce that Tracy Jan will be joining the Business desk to launch a beat covering the intersection of race and the economy as part of the Wonkblog team. Tracy comes to us from the Boston Globe, where she has covered national politics and health policy in Washington since 2011. Before that, she won multiple awards as the Globe’s education reporter in Boston, including a first-place National Headliner Award for her 2008 series “Last Chance For English High,” which vividly told the stories of students and educators struggling to save one of America’s oldest public high schools.

Tracy is a consummate journalist whose portfolio shows she has both the wits to delve into topics as complex as nuclear fusion and the empathy to tell compelling human stories, as she did when chronicling the experiences of first-generation college students at Harvard University. Those skills helped Tracy earn recognition as a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2008 and 2010. They also will be invaluable in her exploration of the nuanced world of race in America and how demographics are transforming business and the economy.

Tracy is a graduate of Stanford University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in communication and a master’s degree in sociology. Before joining the Globe in 2004, she worked at the Oregonian, first covering crime and courts and later covering education.

She lives in Adams Morgan with her partner, Gerald, and their 4-year-old son, Langston. Please join us in welcoming Tracy when she starts on Dec. 5.