Katherine Mangu-Ward is editor in chief of Reason, the magazine of "free minds and free markets." A few of her more memorable cover stories include a defense of plastic bags, an argument for why you almost certainly shouldn’t vote, and a welcome to our new robot overlords.
She started as Reason intern in 2000, and has worked at The Weekly Standard and The New York Times.
Her writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and numerous other publications. She is a frequent commentator on radio and television, including HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, Fox News, and C-SPAN. She has debated capitalism and socialism for Intelligence Squared and with Jacobin. She gave a TED Talk about what capitalism gets right and what governments get wrong. She did a Reddit AMA. She is a Future Tense Fellow at New America and serves on the board of directors of Students for Liberty.
She regularly loses to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for best columnist at the Los Angeles Press Club Awards but has managed to pick up a few other prizes, including the Kenneth Y. Tomlinson Award for Outstanding Journalism from The Fund for American Studies.
Mangu-Ward is a graduate of Yale University, where she received a B.A. in philosophy and political science. She lives in Washington, D.C.
