Zanny Minton-Beddoes is the 17th and first female Editor-in-Chief of The Economist since February 2015. Beddoes is considered one of the most influential voices in financial journalism. Beddoes (born in 1967) was educated at Moreton Hall School near Oswestry, received an undergraduate degree at Oxford University, where she studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Hilda's College, and obtained a masters degree from Harvard University, as a Kennedy Scholar. After graduation, she was recruited as an adviser to the Minister of Finance in Poland, as part of a small group headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard. She then spent two years as an economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where she worked on macroeconomic adjustment programs in Africa and the transition economies of Eastern Europe. Through this work, she joined The Economist in 1994 as the magazine's correspondent for emerging markets, based in London. She became the Economics editor in 1996, overseeing global economics coverage from Washington DC, and later moved to Business Affairs editor, responsible for business, finance and science. In February 2015 she began as the 17th and first female Editor-in-Chief of The Economist. She traveled extensively in Latin America and Eastern Europe, writing editorials and country analyses. She has written surveys of the World Economy, Latin American finance, global finance and Central Asia. She has published in Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, contributed chapters to several conference volumes and, in 1997, edited “Emerging Asia”, a book on the future of emerging-markets in Asia, published by the Asian Development Bank. In 1998 she testified before Congress on the introduction of the Euro and in 2015 she has been invited to attend the renowned Bilderberg Group meeting, of international elitists, although it is well known that those journalists who attend are not permitted to divulge details of matters discussed at these secretive gatherings of the world's power brokers. Minton Beddoes is a regular television and radio commentator. She is a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a member of the Research Advisory Board of the Committee for Economic Development. Since 2017 she also is one of four members of the publisher collective of the German weekly "Die Zeit". As the the daughter of a German mother she is bilingual.