Our board of economists and journalists approves projects.
Their criteria are simple, to support great business journalism and ensure our funds are always additional to the money that would otherwise have been available.
We are currently speaking to others who may be interested in joining our board.
Founding Trustees
Geoffrey Heal (co-chair) is Paul Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Responsibility at Columbia University and Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs. He is a Director at Columbia’s Center for Economy, Environment and Society, at the Center for Globalization and Sustainable Development, and at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Heal is a founder and board chairman of the Coalition for Rainforest Nations. His books include Economic Theory and Exhaustible Resources, Oil and the International Economy, Valuing the Future, and When Principles Pay. He holds a BA (Hons.) and a PhD,. in Economics, both from Churchill College, Cambridge.
Anya Schiffrin (co-chair) is the acting director of the International Media and Communications Concentration at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD. She has worked as a finance and economics journalist in Europe and Asia, writing for the Wall Street Journal, and serving as bureau chief in Amsterdam and Hanoi for Dow Jones Newswires. Her books include Covering Globalization: A Handbook for Reporters, Covering Oil: A Reporter’s Guide to Energy and Development , Covering Labor: A Reporter’s Guide to Worker’s Rights in a Global Economy, and Business and Economic Reporting: Covering Companies, Financial Markets and the Broader Economy.
Deborah Hargreaves (Editorial Advisor) is the chair of the High Pay Commission (UK) and the former business editor of the Guardian, a post she held from 2006 to 2010. She has written extensively about executive remuneration and other business issues both in print and online. She previously worked at the Financial Times where she was news editor and before that, financial editor. She held a variety of posts over 19 years at the FT including personal finance editor and as a foreign correspondent in Brussels and Chicago. She has also worked as a journalist in New York. Since leaving the Guardian she has done some work for the New Economics Foundation as well as running a blog. She is married with three children and speaks German, Russian and French.
John Lloyd (Editorial Advisor) is the Director of Journalism at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University. He is a contributing editor to the Financial Times, where he has previously been Labour Editor, Industrial Editor, East European Editor and Moscow Bureau Chief. In 2003, he was the founding Editor of the Financial Times Weekend Magazine. His has has been an editor of Time Out, an editor of the New Statesman, a reporter for Independent Radio News; a reporter for London Weekend’s London Programme and producer on Weekend World. His first job in journalism was as a copy boy on the Scottish Daily Mail: his first reporting experience was a year as a freelance reporter in Belfast in the early seventies. He writes regularly for La Repubblica of Rome.
Sylvia Nasar (Editorial Advisor) is the James S. and John L. Knight Professor of Business Journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is the author of A Beautiful Mind, for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Trained as an economist, Professor Nasar has been a New York Times economics correspondent, staff writer at Fortune  and columnist at U.S. News & World Report . Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Newsweek, The New York Times Sunday Book Review, FastCompany, and the London Telegraph. Nasar, who grew up in Germany and Turkey, holds a B.A. from Antioch College, an M.A. from New York University, and an honorary doctorate from De Paul University.
James B. Stewart (Editorial Advisor) is the Bloomberg professor of business journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of eight books, including national best-sellers DisneyWar and Den of Thieves. Stewart writes a column in SmartMoney, which also appears in the Wall Street Journal. He contributes regularly to The New Yorker and was formerly Page One Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Stewart is the recipient of a 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Wall Street Journal articles on the 1987 stock market crash, and the winner of the George Polk award and two Gerald Loeb awards. Stewart is a graduate of Harvard Law School and DePauw University.
Founders
Maha Rafi Atal (Executive Director) is an academic researcher and journalist working at the intersection of business and international affairs. She is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, where her thesis examines the role of multinational corporations as governing authorities in India, Kenya and South Africa. She is also former Editor-in-Chief of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs. Her work work has appeared in Forbes, Fortune, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the Christian Science Monitor, the New Statesman, the Providence Journal and the Columbia Journalism Review. She holds a B.A. (Hons.) in History and Comparative Literature from Brown University and an M.A. in Business and Economics Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Damian Kahya (co-founder) is a London-based energy analyst. He has reported from Phnom Penh, Cambodia; La Paz, Bolivia; and Charleston, West Virginia. He has worked for The Guardian, The Phnom Penh Post, NPR and the BBC. From 2004 to 2005, he was the publisher and editor of the London Line, a weekly paper. He holds a M.A. (Cantab.) in Social and Political Sciences from Trinity Hall College, Cambridge and an M.A. in Business and Economics Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.