Jill Barshay’s 25-year career in print-and-radio journalism began in Moscow during the collapse of the Soviet Union. She has spent the majority of these years as a business reporter, covering both Wall Street finance and the intersection of money and politics in Washington D.C. A little more than five years ago, she became obsessed with both data and education, and has combined the two as a contributing editor at The Hechinger Report, a non-profit, independent news outlet devoted to education. In her weekly column, Education by the Numbers, Jill delves into quantitative education research and occasionally crunches the numbers herself. She taught algebra to ninth graders during the 2013-14 school year. She is working on a book about big data and education, which she began as a 2016-17 Spencer Fellow in Education Reporting at the Columbia School of Journalism.
Previously, Barshay was the New York bureau chief for Marketplace, a national business show on public radio stations. She has also worked for The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Congressional Quarterly, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Dow Jones Newswires.