Jenny Anderson

Jenny Anderson has been a journalist for more than 20 years, 10 of which she spent covering finance at the New York Times and six focused on learning and education. She is the host of the Learnit podcast, featuring the world’s leading edtech company CEOs, school and university heads, policy makers, and learning scientists. Her weekly Substack newsletter “How to Be Brave” reaches more than 90,000 global education leaders. Her work examines how parents, teachers, policymakers, scientists, and entrepreneurs around the world use science and technology to inform how we teach, learn, and parent in the age of artificial intelligence.

Anderson spent four years at Institutional Investor magazine, one at the New York Post, and 10 at the New York Times, where she had a column called “The Insider.” In 2008 she won a Gerald Loeb award for her coverage of Merrill Lynch leading up to the financial crisis. After more than a decade covering Wall Street, she shifted her focus to schools and learning at the Times.

In 2015 Anderson left the Times to join Quartz, where she created four “obsessions,” or interdisciplinary beats: the Science of Learning, the Art of Parenting, Being Human, and one about the neuroscience of early childhood. In 2020 she launched her podcast and newsletter, while continuing to freelance for The Atlantic and New York Times.

Anderson is the co-author, with Rebecca Winthrop, Ph.D., director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institute, of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better. Her first book, about marriage and behavioral economics is called It’s Not You, It’s the Dishes; it won a Books for a Better Life award in 2011.

Anderson is a frequent speaker, moderating or speaking on panels at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Brookings Institution, Teach for All, ONE, and Learnit among others.