User:16912 Rhiannon/Nina Easton

Nina Jane Easton is an American journalist and author. She is currently a senior editor and columnist for Fortune Magazine where she covers political and economic news. Easton is also the co-chair of Fortune Magazine's annual Most Powerful Women Summit, a frequent political analyst on television and 2012 fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Journalism
Nina Easton started her career in journalism in 1981 as a writer for Ralph Nader, for whom she co-authored a book on the Reagan Administration. In 1984 she became a staff reporter for the Washington D.C.-based Legal Times. She then wrote for The American Banker and Businessweek before joining the Los Angeles Times as a staff writer, a position she held from 1988 to 1998. Easton's writing for the Los Angeles Times earned her a National Headliner Award in 1994 for best magazine writing and a Sunday Magazine Editors Award for investigative reporting.

In 2003, Easton joined The Boston Globe as the deputy bureau chief at the paper's Washington bureau. Since 2006, she has been a senior editor covering politics and economics for Fortune Magazine. Easton also serves as co-chair of Fortune Magazine's annual Most Powerful Women Summit, which hosts events in the United States as well as internationally. She has interviewed a number of top officials including then-Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney in 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama in June 2008, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in November 2011, at the APEC summit of world leaders in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Easton is a regular panelist on Fox News Sunday and Special Report with Bret Baier, among other Fox news shows. She has also contributed commentary to NBC's Meet the Press, CBS's Face the Nation, ABC's This Week and PBS programs including The Charlie Rose Show. During the 2004 elections she was an analyst on CNN and during the 2008 campaign she provided commentary for Fox News.

Recognition and Harvard fellowships
In 1991, Easton was named a "rising star" by the British-American Project, a collaborative project between the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In 1995 she co-chaired the organization's annual conference in England.

In spring 2012, Easton was named a Goldsmith Fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. Easton's announced research project focused on the increasing income inequality in the United States and its impact on Americans' views of the wealthy. Also in 2012, she was named a fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics where her responsibilities include leading a study group for the Harvard community focusing on role the economy plays in the election cycle.

Publications
Easton is the author of several books. In 1982, Easton co-authored Reagan's Ruling Class: Portraits of the President's Top 100 Officials with Ronald Brownstein. The book, whose preface was written by Nader, profiled individuals involved in Ronald Reagan's presidency and included interviews with most of the administration's top officials.

Easton's Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Ascendancy was published in 2002, examining the rise of modern conservatism and what Easton called the "hidden history" of the baby-boom generation. Gang of Five profiled five leaders of the conservative movement in America: William Kristol, Grover Norquist, David M. McIntosh, Clint Bolick and Ralph Reed.

While working for The Boston Globe, Easton co-authored John F. Kerry: A Complete Biography by The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best, with fellow Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Brian Mooney. The book was published in 2004.

Personal life
Easton grew up in California and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley. On November 27, 2004 she married Russell Schriefer, a Republican political strategist and current senior advisor to the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney. In May 2007, Washington Monthly named Easton and Schriefer to its list of Washington "power couples". They live in Chevy Chase, Maryland.