Jessica Lessin

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Jessica Lessin
Jessica Lessin Headshot (cropped).jpg
BornJessica Elizabeth Vascellaro
(1983-05-11) May 11, 1983 (age 38)
OccupationJournalist, businesswoman
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvard College (BA)
Years active2005 - current
SpouseSamuel Lessin[1]
Children1
Website
www.theinformation.com

Jessica E. Lessin is an American journalist who serves as editor-in-chief of the technology website The Information, which she founded in December 2013.[2][3][4] Lessin had previously spent eight years at The Wall Street Journal covering the technology and media industries.[5][6][7]

Early life and education[]

Born Jessica Elizabeth Vascellaro, her father, Jerome Vascellaro, is the COO of private equity firm TPG Capital and a trustee of Brown University.[8][9] She attended New Canaan Country School in Connecticut before enrolling at Harvard University in 2001.[10] She graduated from Harvard College in 2005, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in history. While at Harvard, she wrote for The Harvard Crimson and served as an executive editor.[11][12]

Career[]

After graduating from Harvard, she completed an internship at the Wall Street Journal and later became a full-time staff member.[10] During her tenure at the publication, Lessin wrote more than a thousand articles and news stories while covering Apple,[13] Google,[14] Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and other global technology companies.[12] She was part of the team that was a 2012 Pulitzer Finalist for a series on digital privacy.[15] The team won a public service award from the Society of Professional Journalists for the same series. She has appeared on CNBC, NPR, CNN, Charlie Rose, and is a regular speaker at international conferences.[16][17]

Lessin left the Wall Street Journal in 2013 to establish The Information, an online tech publication based in San Francisco.[18] Lessin was listed as an Influential Woman in Technology by Business Insider in 2014.[19]

By 2017, The Information expanded the markets it covered, opened offices in Hong Kong and New York City, and had grown to 22 staff members.[12] That same year, Lessin announced that The Information was launching a business accelerator aimed at building subscription-based news organizations.[20]

Personal life[]

In 2012, Lessin married Samuel Lessin, a former Facebook VP and current startup founder and investor.[21][22] Their first child was born in early 2017.

References[]

  1. ^ "The 19 Hottest Power Couples in Tech". Financial Post.
  2. ^ Mathew Ingram. "The Founder of The Information on What Media Companies Are Doing Wrong". Fortune.
  3. ^ "Lack of centralized cloud infrastructure team hampering Apple's development of iCloud services – report". Apple Insider. By Katie MarsalNovember 24, 2014,
  4. ^ "Apple Watch: Apple Silent On Smartwatch’s Battery Life". International Business Times, By Thomas Halleck on September 9, 2014.
  5. ^ "New Venture for AllThingsD Journalists". New York Times, By RAVI SOMAIYAJAN. 2, 2014.
  6. ^ Luis Suarez-Villa (December 9, 2014). Corporate Power, Oligopolies, and the Crisis of the State. SUNY Press. pp. 243–. ISBN 978-1-4384-5485-6.
  7. ^ "Fusion Set to Name Director of Media Innovation". New York Times, By EMILY STEEL, September 7, 2014.
  8. ^ "Who We Are | TPG".
  9. ^ "Jessica Vascellaro, Samuel Lessin". The New York Times. September 23, 2012.
  10. ^ a b Merissa Marr. "Inside (The) Information". Columbia Journalism Review.
  11. ^ Michael Firestone; Stephanie Kendall; Jessica Vascellaro. "The Case For Senior Gift". The Harvard Crimson.
  12. ^ a b c Lucia Moses. "How Jessica Lessin Used Her Reporting Chops to Build The Information". Digiday.
  13. ^ "It’s iTime: Apple gets to work on glass smartwatch". Irish Examiner, February 13, 2013. By Karen O'Shea
  14. ^ "Interview: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks Apple". iPhone Developers, December 5, 2012 | Chase Tillar
  15. ^ "The Pulitzer Prizes – Finalists". pulitzer.org.
  16. ^ Robert Andrews (March 20, 2014). "The Information's Jessica Lessin on building a subscription business – video". the Guardian.
  17. ^ "The future of news: know thy audience". the Guardian. March 19, 2014.
  18. ^ Eric Johnson (May 18, 2017). "Jessica Lessin Built a Business to Prove Information Doesn't Have to Be Free". Recode.
  19. ^ "Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter – Business Insider". Business Insider. May 18, 2014.
  20. ^ Brady Dale (July 28, 2017). "The Information's Founder Jessica Lessin Nudges News Past Its Funny Money Era". Observer.
  21. ^ Josh Constine. "Inside 'Fin,' the elite human/AI assistant". TechCrunch.
  22. ^ Alyson Shontell. "A Facebook Executive's Wedding was the Tech Networking Event of The Year". Business Insider.

External links[]

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