Allan Sloan and Cezary Podkul

Allan Sloan, formerly a ProPublica editor at large and a Washington Post columnist, has been writing about business for almost 50 years. He has won seven Loeb Awards, business journalism’s highest honor, in four different categories (including lifetime achievement) in four different decades for five different employees. Allan, who calls himself “a recovering English major” was a straight-A student in college economics (he took just one course), specializes in explaining complicated things in simple ways. For example, he compared Wall Street geniuses who sliced mortgage securities into complicated pieces with Tyson Foods selling chicken parts. Allan has worked at the Charlotte Observer, the Detroit Free Press, Forbes (twice), Money magazine, Newsday (twice), Newsweek and Fortune. He is a graduate of Brooklyn College, and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He attended the Seminary College of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America for two years while he was at Brooklyn College, but has no degree. ezary Podkul is a former reporter for ProPublica and the Wall Street Journal who writes about finance. Previously, he worked as a reporter at Reuters specializing in data-driven news stories. His work with Carrick Mollenkamp for Reuters’ Uneasy Money series was a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. He has covered energy and commodities and the private equity industry, among other beats, after leaving investment banking in 2008 to pursue journalism. While at ProPublica, he spearheaded ProPublic’s reporting on state and local New York City issues, including regulators’ failure to enforce rent laws. Cezary earned a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2006 and is a 2011 alumnus of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, where he won the Melvin Mencher Prize for Superior Reporting. He is fluent in Polish.