Steve Coll

Steve Coll is the dean of Columbia Journalism School, the former President and CEO of the New America Foundation, and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Previously, he spent twenty years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at The Washington Post, serving as the paper’s managing editor from 1998 to 2004. He is the author of six books, including The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty Oil (1987); Eagle on the Street, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the SEC’s battle with Wall Street (with David A. Vise, 1991); On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (1994); Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004); and most recently, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).

Mr. Coll’s professional awards include two Pulitzer Prizes. He won the first of these in 1990 for explanatory journalism in his series about SEC, with David A. Vise. He was awarded his second in 2005 for his book Ghost Wars, honored in the general nonfiction category. Ghost Wars also won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross award, the Overseas Press Club award, and the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book published on international affairs during 2004. Other awards include the 1992 Livingston Award for outstanding foreign reporting, the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone, and a second Overseas Press Club Award for international magazine writing.

Mr. Coll graduated Phi Beta Kappa, cum laude, from Occidental College in 1980 with a degree in English and history. He lives in Washington, D.C.