Bethany McLean graduated from Williams College in 1992 with a double major in math and English. She spent the next three years working as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs.
In 1995, she joined Fortune Magazine as a reporter, and eventually became an editor-at-large. Her 2001 piece, “Is Enron Overpriced?” was one of the first skeptical articles about Enron, and after the company collapsed into bankruptcy, she co-authored the “Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron” with her Fortune colleague Peter Elkind. A documentary based on the book was nominated for an Academy Award in 2006.
In 2008, McLean joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor. Her book, which she co-authored with New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, is “All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis.” She is also a columnist for Reuters and a contributor to CNBC. In June of 2014 it was announced that Bethany McLean will be returning to Forbes as a columnist for their website, Forbes.com.
Bethany’s new book, Shaky Ground The Strange Saga of the U.S. Mortgage Giants will be released in September 2015.