July 30, 2025 • 39 mins
Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, has carved out a remarkable global career in journalism and economics — one that spans continents and cultures. In this special live episode recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Zanny joins Emily for a conversation about her unexpected path from a rural England farm to the helm of one of the world’s most influential publications. She shares the pivotal moments that shaped her journey: studying in Germany as a child, navigating post-Communist economic reform in Poland, and forgoing a job at Goldman Sachs to pursue policy at the International Monetary Fund. She also opens up about being a woman in traditionally male-dominated fields, the importance of diverse perspectives in shaping global narratives, and why she believes the values The Economist champions — free trade, individual freedom, open markets — are more vital now than ever.
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She Pivots was created by host Emily Tisch Sussman to highlight women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. To learn more about Zanny, follow us on Instagram @ShePivotsThePodcast or visit shepivotsthepodcast.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (00:00):
Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm Za Nemntonvedos.
Emily Tisch Sussman (00:13):
Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk
with women who dare to pivot out of one career
and into something new and explore how their personal lives
impacts these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Today
(00:34):
we have another special candid conversation recorded live here at
the Aspen Ideas Festival. Maybe you can hear the Aspen
trees and streams behind me where I'm sitting down with
some of the world's foremost leaders, innovators, and creators. Today
is my conversation with Zanni Minton Bedos, editor in chief
of The Economist. I'm so excited she Pivots as one
(00:56):
of the inaugural audio first media company to partner with
the festival. It was invigorating to be among brilliant leaders
and thinkers from around the globe to discuss and hear
the ideas that'll shape tomorrow and help us understand today.
Over the next few weeks, you'll hear live candid conversations
from inspiring women recorded here at the festival, from geopolitical issues,
(01:21):
to economic issues, to cultural issues and beyond. Each interview
connects to the larger cultural moment we're in, and of course,
interreeves their personal lives. I hope you walk away feeling
as inspired and determined as I did to continue to
share our stories and experiences to change the cultural landscape
for a better tomorrow. Let's jump right in. So I'm
(01:50):
here at the Aspen Ideas Festival with Zanni minten Bedos,
editor in chief of the Economist, who has led the
iconic and highly respected publication for over ten years. There
is always one in my house. As I just told you,
I'm excited to chat with her about her pivot into
the world of journalism and the role that she plays
now in the global economic conversation.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (02:09):
Welcome, Zanni, thank you for having me. It's great to
be here.
Emily Tisch Sussman (02:11):
I'm so glad that you made it here to this
conversation after your wild bike ride this morning.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (02:15):
That was I almost didn't make it here to the
Ideas Festival. I was staying with some friends outside of
town and I thought it would be fun to bike in,
so I put into Google Maps, you know Aspen meadows,
and of course it being a bike, it took me
on a proper bike trail, so there. I was kind
of in my going to be on stage outfit, goring
along on this bike trail and it's hot, as you know,
(02:35):
but I made it.
Emily Tisch Sussman (02:36):
Yeah yeah, ready, ready to comment on tariffs at any moment,
in a perfect suit to do it. It's the fun
part of the unknown of the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (02:46):
So we're going to go on chronologic order. Let's go back.
Emily Tisch Sussman (02:48):
You grew up on a farm.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (02:50):
I did grow up on a farm. I grew up
on a farm in Shropshire, which is on the Welsh border,
in rural England, on a farm that's been in my
father's family for generations. Mixed farm. We were talking about agriculture.
Your husband has a farm, but we had sheep, we
had cattle, we had wheat, barley, oats, and it was
an amazing place to grow up, very rural and very
(03:13):
beautiful and a kind of real sense of root. But
what's interesting about my I guess my upbringing is that
my mum is German, which is not what you would
expect from somebody who grew up in rural England. And
she met my dad because she was in ou Pair
in the sixties and they met and then he was
in the army and he met her again in Germany
and had a world with romance, and she came to
(03:33):
rural England. But because I was the eldest, her English
actually wasn't so great. So German is my first language,
and I grew up bilingual, and I actually think that
was a sort of big part of who I am,
because I grew up speaking two languages. Always loved languages,
and my parents are big to holiday every year as
we would go and see my grandmother in Germany. She
lived in the south of Germany. And when I was
(03:54):
in second grade, so seven, doing second and fifth grade,
my parents did something that when I became a parent,
I thought was truly extraordinary. So they sent me to
spend between Christmas and Easter with my grandmother and I
went to school in Germany. And I went to the
local elementary school in Germany for two and a half
three months and was just part of the class because
I went there several years in a row, I had
(04:15):
friends there and so I had this kind of life
in Germany for a few months of the year, and
then I went back to my local primary school in England,
and that from that, I think came a sort of
life long love of travel and a lifelong love of
understanding different countries. And I always knew I wanted to
live and work outside the UK. What about it drew you?
I think seeing that from a very early age that
(04:38):
there was such a different life than what I had
in rural Shropshire because my grandmother lived in a suburb
of not a huge town, but on a lake in
a suburb of a town, and it was just a
quite completely different lifetime. I would go off and the
school was very different, and my friends were very different,
and it was a sort of sense, I think, to
have a sort of seven eight that you could kind
(04:59):
of in different ecosystems if you will. I mean, I
didn't think of it like that then, but it would.
It was definitely the beginning of I was determined to
learn lots of languages, and I was determined to travel.
Emily Tisch Sussman (05:09):
The fields that you're in now, in economics, in journalism,
in worldwide perspective are very intellectual fields. Did you see
seeds of that in your childhood or when did that
turn on for you?
Zanny Minton Beddoes (05:23):
Very early on, I knew I wanted to experience other places.
I wanted to go to lots of different I knew
I didn't want to just live and work in England.
In fact, when I was, you know, six or seven eight,
maybe people would say, well, you know, as you ask kids,
what do you what do you want to be when
you grow up? And I said, I want to be
a flight attendant because it was the only thing I
could think of that involved traveling to lots of places.
Then I was I grew a bit older, and I thought,
maybe be something like a diplomat, you know i'd want.
(05:44):
But I always knew I wanted to be in lots
of different places, and I learned everyone learned French in
English in England. But I was incredibly lucky. At secondary school,
I went to a boarding school about an hour from
my parents, which was not a neither particularly academic school,
but it was it was a great school. I liked it,
and as it happens, we had a teacher there who
(06:04):
was an elderly gentleman who had been a baron in all.
His family was an ennobled family in the former Soviet Union,
and he had moved them to Wales and he taught Russian.
And that was another kind of completely weird thing to
how why on earth would you be able to learn
Russian in the school in the middle of nowhere in England.
Emily Tisch Sussman (06:22):
But I did.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (06:22):
I learned Russian and from that decided I applied to
university and I was I guess I was reasonably intelligent.
So I my school which had they said you should
apply to Oxford. So I applied to Oxford and managed
to get in, and then wanted to travel before I
did that, So it took a year out and persuaded
my father that I should be allowed to go traveling.
(06:43):
And my friend's quite traditional and he said, well, you
need to be able to have some skills so that
you can earn some money. If you're traveling, you need
to raise the money to go. So I worked for
six months in various odd jobs, but the contract was
that I needed to learn to type and I needed
to learn to cook, which shows you how wonderfully old
fashion he was.
Emily Tisch Sussman (07:00):
So I did the only skills one would need, the
only skills that a young woman would need.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (07:05):
But actually actually it was really quite useful because I
learned to touch type. In those days, I had a
month's crash course and you had to pass this course.
It was at some very shady typing school in London.
You had to do sixty words a minute for five
minutes with fewer than five mistakes, and then you've got
the diploma. And if you've got the diploma, you could
become what was called a temp which was a temporary typist.
(07:27):
And so my first job, very first job, was in
the typing pool at the Crown Court in sovo In, London,
and from which I actually got fired, which was a
little embarrassing. On my fourth day I went, I went
out to lunch with a boyfriend or a Wanabe boyfriend,
and we came back. I came back twenty minutes late,
and that was it. I got fired. But anyway, this
so I raised the money and then with those skills,
(07:48):
I went traveling and I spent seven I went to
Hong Kong, I went to Australia. I went to New
Zealand and came back via La the West Coast, and
that was my first taste of the US, and I
remember then completely loving the US and went to university,
did a bunch of traveling. Through university. In those days,
you didn't have to do things like internships, and so
every vacation I would go and earn the money and
(08:09):
then I would go traveling and then at the end
of my I guess my third year, I really didn't
know what to do. I applied for the Foreign Office.
The diplomat thing was still there, so I applied for that.
But I also had a professor who she was an
amazing tutor, and she said, there's a thing called the
Kennedy scholarshis you should apply for them. And the Kennedy
Scholarship is kind of like a reserve reverse road scholarship.
It's a scholarship that British young people couldn't go to Harvard.
(08:32):
And amazingly I got one and went off to Harvard.
And that was the kind of life changing moment. Oh,
a life changing how well, first off, going to university
in the US was just going to be in the US.
This was nineteen eighty nine. Was an amazing experience. I
went with a friend and I didn't know her that
well before we went, but she and I were the
same year at Oxford, and we rented an apartment, very
(08:55):
small apartment in Summerville, which is not far from Harvard,
and we then were suddenly thrown into a marriage graduate school,
which is you know, I was at the Kennedy School,
which is an amazing, credible experience, people from all over
the world, a whole different way of learning. So that
was really exciting. Was the first time I had sort
of seen how an American educational system worked. I remember
just being amazed by everything. And then at the end
(09:17):
of that year, again I was wondering what should I do.
And then internships are very important because Americans even then
toook internships very seriously. And I again didn't know what
to do until someone said to me, there is a
professor Jeffrey Sachs who was at the Economics Department, is
taking some interns to Poland. This was nineteen ninety, just
after the Berlin War had fallen to work in the
(09:38):
Ministry of Finance as part of a group for the
reformist finance minister for the first post communist government. And
he said, why don't you this friend of Mineset, why
don't you go and see if you can get a
part of this group. And I went to Professor Sax's
office hours knocked on the door and he said, well,
actually I got my interns. It's full. And I then
(09:58):
I was I said, okay, I'll try my pitch and
I said, well, you know, I Poland has a big
agricultural sector. And I know all about agriculture because I
grew up on a farm. And Polish is kind of
a bit like Russian and a bit like German, and
I speak Russian and German, and so I think you
should take me. And anyway, the kind of I guess
the Kutzpo was enough and he took me. And that
was actually the really life changing thing going to work
(10:21):
in Poland in the summer of nineteen ninety, which was
less than a year after the war came down as
this country moved from communism to capitalism, and the government
of the finance minister was called Lesheg Basovich, and he
was leading this economic reform program which is called shock therapy.
And what was meant by shock therapy is that they
(10:42):
essentially lifted all price controls, lifted all tariffs, freed up
the economy kind of almost overnight, and so you really
saw free markets in action. And when I went there,
Poland was very heavily bombed during the war, so it's not,
at least wasn't then the world's most beautiful city. And
in the kind of along the main street were these
big shops that were the old Soviet era shops, which
(11:05):
essentially were very drab and they had long, long shelves
either nothing on or you know, exactly the same tin
of piltures kind of all along the shelf. It was
a perfect example of what you imagined the command economy
of communist economy to be like. But outside on the pavement,
on the sidewalk, as you would say, were stall after
stall of people who had driven in their Soviet made
(11:27):
cars to Berlin, which is not very far from Poland,
because all prices had been freed and these were traders
and they'd gone and they'd bought bananas, oranges, fresh food,
women's underwear, everything that they knew people actually wanted to buy,
and were setting up shops. And this one was setting
up stalls on the pavement. And for me, I still
can kind of visualize it very powerfully. It was a
(11:47):
real sense of this is what happens when you free
up prices, this is what happens when you free markets.
And I had been studying economics and I thought, my god,
this is what happens, and that was a just a
really pivotal moment. I can see what happens when you
reform an economy and I can see what happens when
capitalist forces start stirring. And so I took a semester off.
(12:10):
I worked for Jeff Sax and his team for you know,
that semester that I took off, and I was I
moved from the Ministry of Finance to what was called
the Ministry of Foreign Economic Cooperation and was the sort
of assistant speech writer to the minister. And they were
then the polls were negotiating a kind of agreement with
the European Union, the new Polish government, and so I
(12:32):
worked on that and I helped them, and then I
went back and finished my degree. But that kind of
made me think, I want to I want to use,
you know, what I've learned about economics to work in
economic policy, because I could see what happened. And I
think it also all I probably didn't realize all the time.
It reinforced that sense of the power of markets, the
(12:54):
power of freedom, the power of the individual, which you
know is really what underpins the economist, right. I mean,
we are that's what we stand for. And I feel
it very very viscerally, and I think it comes from
that experience. And when I look back now, you know,
whatever it is along many decades later, that moment after
the Berlin wilfell with the collapse of communism was the
(13:17):
sort of beginning really of an arc and an era
which is sort of now coming to an end, because
it was an era of taris coming down, economies opening up,
emerging markets, globalization, all the things that are now in
the debate in this country seen as often bad words.
That era started at the beginning of my career, and
so I feel it's very striking that now as i'm
(13:40):
sort of, you know, towards the et monomic and not
at the end of my career, but towards further into it,
that all of those things that I felt very visceral
and I still feel very viscerally and now much more challenged.
Emily Tisch Sussman (13:50):
You ended up working over the next couple of years
in macroeconomic programs in Africa and Central and Eastern Europe,
so you really went to very many any different countries,
in different and different regions that were in different phases
of economic growth. Were you looking for more opportunities to
learn to build upon it, or did you think that
(14:11):
you like, this is now my career and I'm going
to pull the strings, so to speak.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (14:15):
So I knew I wanted to work in economic policy.
I went back from poland finished my degree, then went
to work actually in Ukraine for a couple of months.
I wrote, I co wrote, and my only academic paper
published in a very minor journal. Though my co author
won a Nobel Prize. But there's nothing to do with me.
(14:35):
But that was we were in Kiev and we were
looking at how Ukrainian state farms were being privatized or
were being broken up. And it was it was with
Simon Johnson, who subsequently worked won the Nobel Prize. He
was in Cambridge. I was doing the field work, and
I went out and we wrote a questionnaire and I
basically went to I think it was almost one hundred
of these state farms and asked these questions, and they
(14:58):
who is this woman in her early twenties. These were
these were rural Soviet type communist state farm directors, like,
who the heck is this woman coming? So they, first
of all, they wud insist that I drank loads of
either vodka or there's other thing, this other drink which
is like firewater even worse. And often I was the
first European who'd been in these places and actually in
(15:19):
one place. It was since the Germans coming east during
the war. I mean it was it was quite It
was quite striking going to these places.
Emily Tisch Sussman (15:26):
Feel like, let me switch to my Russian and not
my German yet, yeah, because at that point.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (15:30):
It was actually flying this big Russian. I mean I
did use my Russian. Then you wouldn't do that now,
but I did. And that was a sort of it
was an interview. I wrote this paper, but then I
thought I want to carry on doing economic policy, and
I had when I went back finished my in my
last semester, I was, you know, everyone at graduate school
was applying for their postgraduate school work, and I kind
(15:51):
of then thought I better apply to what everybody else
does too. So I applied for consulting jobs, and I
applied for investment banks, and I applied to the IMS
and the IMA, being the sort of prime international fireman,
if you will, economic fireman. And I got a job
at the IMF, but I turned it down to go
to accept a job at Goldman Sachs. And then that
was in January February. I was going to start in
(16:12):
gold six in the summer went to Ukraine and then
suddenly thought what am I doing? Why am I going
to Wall Street when I could actually really learn about
economic policy? And so I then said, actually, wasn't going
to go to Goldman Sacks told him I wasn't coming,
and grolled and went back to the IMF and said,
can I actually come after all? And I had originally
been going to work for them on post Soviet countries,
and they said, yes you can, but you're going to
have to work on West Africa. You'll have to work
(16:34):
in the Africa department. So I spent a year working
on Marley and Senegal, which had absolutely not been my plan.
This is a very long answer to your question. But
it's not like I sat and I must go and
learn about West Africa. I was completely I was told
I was working there, but that was fascinating. It was
the first time I'd been in Zimbabwe briefly, but I
hadn't really didn't know Africa at all, and worked on
(16:56):
these two countries. Must have gone five or six times.
That was, I mean, real poverty. Bamaco, the capital of
Marley then, had really only one paved road which went
from the airport to the hotel and the main hotel
and to the presidential palace. And we were there a
team of us from the IMF, and we would go
several times a year trying to work out what the
(17:16):
country's balance of payments was, where the economy wasn't, how
much foreign assistance they needed, and how it would all
add up. And I learned a ton if it was
an amazing training. I learned the mechanics of how you
work out economic policy and the mechanics of how you
build a balance of payments, all of those sort of
that was back in the day of Excel spreadsheets. But
(17:36):
hours and hours and hours with these things. But I
realized after a couple of years there that it's a
big bureaucracy. It's a big international bureaucracy, full of incredibly
talented people. But I just realized that I wasn't cut
out for working in a big institutional bureaucracy. And it
was one of those eingsine you're at a certain grade,
and you know that if you've worked very hard and
very well, in five years time, you will be at
this grade, and in ten years time it will be
(17:58):
at this grade. And I guess I was a sort
of restless young person in a hurry, and I just
I can't, you know, and the youngest person on the
team never says in a thing, and then you know
it was. It was very formal but incredibly incredibly talented people.
So I just after I finished the sort of it's
called the Economist program, it was a two year training program,
I decided that actually this was not for me. Almost
(18:19):
went back into investment banking, decided not to again, and
then thought, well, maybe actually what I would really like
to do is economic journalism, because what I liked most
about when I was in both in West Africa for
the IMF and there on my second year, I worked
in Kyrgystan, which was then, you know, a country in
Central Asia, again, a new country. We were building its
(18:40):
balance of payments, building all of the sort of statistical
infrastructure for the country, and I realized that although I
was okay at the spreadsheets, I was not a No
one would ever call me a great model builder. I
was okay at it, but what I was what I
liked doing, was talking to all of the officials, figuring
out what was going on and then kind of writing
up what had happened. And the IMF has a particular jargon,
(19:01):
so it was not the world's most beautiful English, but
I would write this up, and I was reasonably good
at doing that. And then I actually Economic Joermalism would
be interesting. And I'd done student journalism at Oxford. I
edited the student magazine, so I can write. So I
went to applied to the Economists, and applied to the
Financial Times, and went to the Economist, and you know,
nearly thirty years later here I am. So that's the
(19:23):
positive history.
Emily Tisch Sussman (19:24):
Did you have any mentors, advisors, anyone talking you through.
I mean, it's a fairly large decision.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (19:31):
So I've had lots of incredible opportunities, like you know,
the wonderful Baron Fonda Parlan who was my Russian teacher,
or Mary McCaulay, who was my wonderful professor at Oxford,
who said, should really apply for this scholarship. I didn't
have anyone where I sort of thought about the decision
I had. In fact, I had a friend who talked
me out of going to dog Goldman Sacks and going
(19:52):
to the IMATH, who said to me, you know, you
can always go to gold with sex. You'll never go
to the IMF if we don't go now. But it
was not it wasn't a sort of I didn't have
a a mentor in the sense of a single person
who had helped me all the way through. But I've
always you know, when people ask me, now, what advice,
we must ask you this, What advice do you give
a younger person? I always say the same thing, and
I really mean it, which is just grab every opportunity
(20:14):
You'll almost the only thing you will regret is something
you don't do. That's basically my philosophy. The only thing
I regret is things that I don't do. I now
think I should have gone to work on Wall Street
for a couple of years. It would have been really
interesting to have done that, and I never did do it,
And so I was optimizing options. So I would always
say I'm going to do something because it will maximize
the options of what I can do later on. I
(20:36):
want to close off anything. I could never work out
what I wanted to be, so I just wanted to
make sure I could keep as many possible options going,
and that was why I ended up taking. So I
never I didn't sit and say I want to be
a journalist, although I had done student journalism, but I
rended up there through this process of keeping options open.
Emily Tisch Sussman (20:58):
Stay tuned for more of Zenny after the break, Do
you remember what some of the opportunities were that you
(21:18):
grabbed when you first got into the newsroom.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (21:21):
So when ized to join The Economist, I was hired
by the the then editor to I was put in
the foreign department because he was a man who believed
as a rigorous economics and I was, by the stands
of journalism. Because I had some economics training, I was
considered sort of rigorous and quantitative. So I joined the
Foreign department, which was run by lifelong foreign correspondent types
(21:42):
who had beautiful, elegant pros but were probably not so
focused on looking at spreadsheets. And so I went in
as the kind of wantku looked at spreadsheets and learned
how to write, which was My colleagues at the Economist
are include some just extraordinarily good writers. And I'm I mean,
I'm a good writer, but I know one would ever
call me a great writer, least of all me, And
(22:04):
so I learned. I learned that first of all, and
that was a that was a kind of a sort
of tough training, you realize, particularly when you came when
I came to the IMF, which is a wonderful institution,
will never be known for its pros, and so I
arrived writing this sort of slightly wooden jargon that one
had to learn how to write. And there again I
had the kind of Okay, I'm going to grab every opportunity.
(22:25):
And I the editor who is called former editors called
Bill Emmett, created a new job for me, which was
Emerging Markets correspondent, and we hadn't had one before, and
so I basically could write my own job description. And
so I would think, where's an interesting country that I'd
like to go and understand how its economy works. So
I remember going to Chile early on and spending a
(22:47):
week there and then came back and wrote quite a
long article about it, and I thought, this is actually
sort of half of It's exactly what I used to
do at the IMF. Go to a country, meet all
the policy makers, because the economist is an amazing kind of
calling card. So I was then in my whatever late twenties,
and you know, I'd see the Foreign minister, and i'd
see the central bank governor because they care about the economist,
(23:08):
and then I'd come back. And if had I been
at the IMF, I would have come back being the
junior member of a team that would have written a
long report, But as a journalist, I came back and
I wrote an article. I went to the Czech Republic,
I went all over the place, and that the most interesting.
Relatively early on, I think it was ninety four, maybe
the editor said to me, do you want to go
and write a special report which was a long twelve
(23:30):
fourteen thousand word article on the Caspian, the Caucusus and
the Caspian because at that point there was a lot
of oil and gas. Then there was quite a lot
of excitement about it, and I thought, so, why not
so and you got six weeks to do this, And
I went on this trip from Georgia Azerbay, John took Menistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,
(23:53):
and just went through all these extraordinary places and then
wrote a fourteen thousand word piece on what they came.
And that was I remember thinking that this is people
pay me to do this. It's amazing. Did it ever
feel like a little unsafe to be traveling alone as
a woman in these developing nations?
The only time I've ever felt seriously unsafe is was
(24:17):
actually before I became a journalist, when I was still
actually an undergraduate. I was at Oxford and I one
of the summers. There used to be a visa you
could get and it may still exist to work in
the United States as a student. So I was called Bunach,
I remember it. And I got this visa and I
came over to the US. It was nineteen eighty eight
and I worked in New Orleans, what was it called
(24:37):
the Mediterranean Cafe on Decatur Street as a waitress, and
that was an amazing month to earn the money to
then go on traveling. And it was the It was
a cafe. The Mediterranean Cafe was run by a wonderful
to Greek brothers. But nineteen eighty eight it was the
Republican Convention in New Orleans, so I remember vividly they
took down all the pictures of du Carcass and put
(24:58):
up George Bush for the convention because they knew that
would be better for the customers. And I had a
fellow way to called Chuck. And Chuck and I divvied
up the cleontele so that when the you know, when
a group of men came in, I took them, and
when the women came in, he did, and we would
both make better Tips that way, and that was a
I never felt really unsafe in Naorns, but it was
a very luk I was a real eye opener. No
(25:19):
we lived. I lived on Decatur Street, right in the
heart of the French Quarter, which is a you know,
there's a lot of tough stuff there, a lot of drugs,
there's a lot of people who were very serious problems,
a lot of drunk. It was eye opening. But then
from there I went on and went all the way
through Central America, through Mexico, through Guatemala, and I was
traveled for a bit of it. I traveled with a
(25:40):
friend and then I crackers. Really. I decided that I
wanted to go to Nicaragua to Managua overland from New
York and that was my goal. But to do that
you had to go through our Salvador, which was in
the middle of a civil war at that point, and
I was determined to do it. So I went into
Ol Salvador. My friend who I was traveling companion I
(26:00):
was traveling with at that point, he said, look, you,
this is insane and he left and went back to England.
My parents hadn't heard anything from me for three weeks.
They just knew that my traveling companion was back in England,
and eventually I got to Ponduras into Taguzaglper and it
had been I mean, nothing terrible, but it had been
a little scary at times. But in Taguza Glper, which
was at least then was a pretty grim place. I
(26:23):
was staying in some hostel one night on the ground
floor and there was a very sketchy kind of night
watchman type who tried to get into my room. And
that's like the one time and I remember barricading every
chest of drawers, absolutely everything against the door and thinking
that this is this is going to be I'm going
(26:44):
to get raped, this is going to be this is
going to be it. And actually he didn't get in,
and first light I was out of there, and that
was fie. But that was a long answer. That is
literally I think the only time I have been I
have felt in a very very potentially sticky situation.
Emily Tisch Sussman (26:58):
So part of the base of the show is that
we talk about the intersection of the personal and the professional.
So we've covered very well to tell excellent stories. I
would really picture them all, you know. It covered a
lot about the professional side that what brought you into
each of these jobs. I want to try to bring
in the personal. At the same time, I.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (27:19):
Feel like I've been going on about personal stuff. You know,
it's so funny as an tell you stories.
Emily Tisch Sussman (27:24):
And I thought to myself as we were coming into this,
I'm guessing that you know, you came up at a
time in journalism which was a real old boys club,
in economics, which was very male dominated.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (27:35):
That even this might feel a little personal for you. Yeah.
People often ask me, you know, you worked in these
very male dominated environments. What was it like did you
was it very difficult, did you have a hard time?
And you know, I guess I got used to being
in an environment where it was very male looking at
I remember when I would go to a conference that
(27:55):
would be a sea of pale male faces. But I
can honestly say that The Economist is an extraordinary meritocratic place,
and I never ever felt anything other than that, you know,
people of the quality of people's work was what mattered,
and it was a great place to work. It is
a great, I hope for my colleagues, a great place
(28:16):
to work. It's a small We're now three hundred people
in the editorial side of The Economist, and when I
was there, when I first started, it was barely just
over one hundred so it was a very small place,
a very collegial place. And that comes from if you
read The Economist, you will know that the our articles
are unsigned, and so there's a kind of collect sense
(28:36):
of this is a collective endeavor. And when I first started,
all The Economist was was a weekly print publication, and
we all worked together, and it had a very very
strong Mistreeder call and was truly meritocratic. Now if you
looked at it, it's certainly when I joined, it was
very male, very white, very sort of a lot of
posh people, but the sense of it was very a
(28:58):
very very meritocratic place. It's now got much bigger. But
as a result, I genuinely have never I've always felt
that if you do good work, it's going to be rewarded.
And so while I've had, you know, lots and lots
of interesting experiences over the last twenty five years, I
haven't felt that I've had to kind of climb up
(29:18):
a ladder that would have been there was more difficult
because I was a woman. I genuinely haven't. That said,
now I've become much more aware in this position of
a how few women there are leading organizations, whether it's
companies or any organization. And that's all I feel a
(29:38):
kind of sense of responsibility that I didn't really think about,
you know, two decades ago, to try and convince more
people to do this, to try and not start sounding
very pretentious, but not just to sort of be a
role model, but actually to try and you know, change that,
because I think it is kind of shocking how few
organizations are led by women, and how few I mean
(30:00):
there are at the top of most things. And I
think that is it is changing, but it's not changing
fast enough.
Emily Tisch Sussman (30:05):
And I think even just an awareness that if you
don't have, like if you're looking at global economics, you
certainly need to have quite a few women and you
do well.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (30:14):
Christine Lagarde who used to who was, you know, French
finance minister. Then she was head of the IMF. She's
now head of the European Central Bank. She had that
famous quip she said if it had been Lehman's sisters,
they would not have been a financial crisis.
Emily Tisch Sussman (30:29):
After the break More from Zanni, is there something that
can be something that we talked about, or can be
something totally different that at the time you saw as
(30:51):
like a real negative or a low point in your career,
and now you see it as having really launched you
to the success you are now.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (30:57):
I think I've become a different kind of person. I
started off with a sort of I've always been very competitive,
but it was a restless competitiveness. I wanted to be
good at what I was doing, but I wasn't quite
sure whether what I was doing. I was always wondering
whether what somebody else was doing was better than what
I was doing, and white what should I be good
at that too? And it was it was a sort
of debilitating, that restless competitiveness. And I've been so lucky.
(31:21):
We've talked about a bit of it, but I've been
able to have as my job going around the world
trying to understand different countries, trying to hearing different people's stories,
trying to make sense of it. And now I feel
a sense that the values that the economist stands for,
that I passionately believe in individual freedom, free markets are
kind of under attack, actually, and so I now have
(31:43):
a very strong sense of what we do matters in
a really fundamental sense, and it drives me, and it's
not that's not come from any hardship earlier on, but
I've one I feel that it's really really important, and
I think I've become much more aware that I know
what I'm good at and what I'm not good at.
I'm an okay writer. I'm certainly not a great writer
(32:04):
compared to all my colleagues, but I am quite good
at helping frame arguments, and I'm I think, quite good
at getting my getting people to work together to produce
really good stuff. And that's what I now get a
lot of satisfaction from. So it's less about individual stuff.
It's about how to bring my colleagues, whether it's five
(32:25):
of them or three hundred of them together to be
fired up by what fires me up about what we're
trying to do, about what the economist believes in at
this time. So you know, if we're making money subscriptions
are growing, that's great, but what we're doing is really important.
So there are just and I can This for me
was one of the most powerful things. It was. A
year ago I got a letter from a gentleman who
(32:46):
was I think it was half Iranian, half American, who
had been a political prisoner in Evan prison at Wilful
Prison in Tehran, and he sent me a note saying
that he thought I might like to know that while
he was there, the Economist had kept him going, and
that there had been a kind of underground railroad kind
of delivery of The Economist and the lengths that he
(33:08):
and his fellow prisoners had gone to to get the
Economist and to pass it to others. And I read
that think we published it last year, and I thought,
this is what makes what we do worth work. And
it wasn't that I had some hardship that got me
to that, But I've been lucky enough to be able
for thirty years to do what I love doing, and
now to be able to lead an organization that I
(33:29):
truly believe in what we do. I think it really matters,
and if we can have we can make that difference
in people's lives, you know, it's all really worth it.
Emily Tisch Sussman (33:37):
Why Why is The Economist so important now?
Zanny Minton Beddoes (33:39):
Because The Economist is a publication. We call ourselves a newspaper,
but increasingly because we have podcasts, we have videos, we
have a digital presence, I think it's a better called
a publication. We were founded in eighteen forty three to
fight for free trade. There was something called the corn
Laws in the United Kingdom at that point, which were
basically tariffs which were kept in place by to essentially
(34:02):
protect rich, aristocratic run farms and meant that poor people
had to pay higher prices for their bread. And there
was a big movement to get rid of them, the
free trade movement, and the Economist was essentially created to
fight for free trade, to fight for openness, to fight
for traditional English liberal values. And we've done that ever
since eighteen forty three. And you know, you look around
(34:23):
the world now and those values openness to immigration, free trade,
free markets are increasingly under attack. Look at what's happening
in this country right now. And when I started this job,
when I became editor in chief in twenty fifteen, the
kind of worldview that the Economist is associated with globalization,
freer trade, open markets was kind of a establishment view.
(34:47):
It was a standard view. But ten years later it's
very much not. Ten years later, you have populism, you
have people protectionism, you have people who want to put
up barriers. You have a foreign policy which is much
more transactional, you know, one country against the other, and
so the kind of world that my career has been
able to watch essentially be created after the fall of
(35:10):
the Berlin Wall, after the collapse of communism, I think
is now under threat in a way that's very striking
across the world. Whether it's the tensions between the US
and China, whether it's the increase in tariffs from that
the Trump administration is doing, whether it's intervention in economies,
whether it's the attitude to immigrants. Across the board, there
is a moving away from those kind of traditional English
(35:32):
liberal and I have to say English books is American
liberals something slightly different English Liberal values. And so I
think what the Economist does, which is not just provide
superb analysis and journalism, and you know, we're not partisan,
we're rigorous, we're fact checked. It's really very very rigorous
good journalism, but it also does it in the sort
(35:53):
of founded on these values, and we make the case
for this kind of world, which I passionately believe is
about world than the one that we're heading towards.
Emily Tisch Sussman (36:01):
So it matters this phase that we're moving into now.
I just have to get your take on this. Do
you think we are moving into a phase sort of
the decline of US superpower and the rise of Chinese Like,
is it inevitable?
Zanny Minton Beddoes (36:13):
No, No, it's absolutely non inevitable. First of all, China,
China has done an extraordinary job at reducing poverty and
becoming a successful economy. But China has real challenges. It's
a huge demographic challenge. China's aging incredibly quickly. China's economy
has huge problems. So I don't think one should sort
of fetishize how strong China is. What I think is
a problem. And I also think the United States. And
(36:35):
I'm as I said to you, I came first to
the West Coast when before I was even at university,
I spent most of my adult life living in the US.
My kids are American citizens. I love this country. But
the reason I love this country is that it is
a country where people come. It's a magnet for people
all over the world who want to make the best
of their lives in America. And it's this magic combination
(36:57):
of an incredibly deep capital market, a competitive economy, the
best most talented people, the best universities. That is this
magic cocktail that has created not just the sort of
wealth that is the United States, but what I see
the US doing now and it's bipartisan, it's both parties.
Is because of the fear of China, the US is
essentially becoming something very different, putting up tariff walls, putting
(37:19):
on export restrictions, you know, becoming skeptical of migrant Look
at what the administration is doing for the best universities.
It's I think, turning it's back on some of the
things that have made this country right great, and in
some ways the US is becoming a little bit more Chinese, more,
a greater kind of government, control, less open, and less
(37:39):
and for me, that is tragic. The US has, Yes,
China's competitor, Yes, China's an authoritarian regime. Yes they've caught up. Yes,
there are certain areas where you know, the US needs
to make sure it stays ahead. But turning sort of
fear of China into a debilitating fetish is I think
something that will not lead to good posy in this country.
Emily Tisch Sussman (38:02):
Thank you so much for joining us and this is phenomenal.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (38:05):
Thank you for having me. Thank you gag it to
me so.
Emily Tisch Sussman (38:07):
Great to meet you. Thank you so much for listening
to this special episode of she Pivots, recorded live at
the Aspen Ideas festival. The best way to stay up
to date with Zanni is to subscribe to The Economist
or to follow her on Twitter at zannimb Thanks for
(38:28):
listening to this episode of she Pivots. I hope you
enjoyed it, and if you did, leave us a rating
and tell your friends about us. To learn more about
our guests, follow us on Instagram at she pivots the Podcast,
or sign up for our newsletter, where you can get
exclusive behind the scenes content on our website at she
pivots thepodcast dot com. This episode was produced and edited
(38:54):
by Emily Atavelosk, with sound editing and mixing from Nina Pollock.
Audio production and social media by Hannah Cousins, research by
Christine Dickinson, and logistics and planning by Emma Stopic and
Kendall Krupkin. She Pivots is proud to be a part
of the iHeart Podcast Network. I endorse t pivots.
Welcome back to she Pivots. I'm Za Nemntonvedos.
Emily Tisch Sussman (00:13):
Welcome back to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk
with women who dare to pivot out of one career
and into something new and explore how their personal lives
impacts these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Today
(00:34):
we have another special candid conversation recorded live here at
the Aspen Ideas Festival. Maybe you can hear the Aspen
trees and streams behind me where I'm sitting down with
some of the world's foremost leaders, innovators, and creators. Today
is my conversation with Zanni Minton Bedos, editor in chief
of The Economist. I'm so excited she Pivots as one
(00:56):
of the inaugural audio first media company to partner with
the festival. It was invigorating to be among brilliant leaders
and thinkers from around the globe to discuss and hear
the ideas that'll shape tomorrow and help us understand today.
Over the next few weeks, you'll hear live candid conversations
from inspiring women recorded here at the festival, from geopolitical issues,
(01:21):
to economic issues, to cultural issues and beyond. Each interview
connects to the larger cultural moment we're in, and of course,
interreeves their personal lives. I hope you walk away feeling
as inspired and determined as I did to continue to
share our stories and experiences to change the cultural landscape
for a better tomorrow. Let's jump right in. So I'm
(01:50):
here at the Aspen Ideas Festival with Zanni minten Bedos,
editor in chief of the Economist, who has led the
iconic and highly respected publication for over ten years. There
is always one in my house. As I just told you,
I'm excited to chat with her about her pivot into
the world of journalism and the role that she plays
now in the global economic conversation.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (02:09):
Welcome, Zanni, thank you for having me. It's great to
be here.
Emily Tisch Sussman (02:11):
I'm so glad that you made it here to this
conversation after your wild bike ride this morning.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (02:15):
That was I almost didn't make it here to the
Ideas Festival. I was staying with some friends outside of
town and I thought it would be fun to bike in,
so I put into Google Maps, you know Aspen meadows,
and of course it being a bike, it took me
on a proper bike trail, so there. I was kind
of in my going to be on stage outfit, goring
along on this bike trail and it's hot, as you know,
(02:35):
but I made it.
Emily Tisch Sussman (02:36):
Yeah yeah, ready, ready to comment on tariffs at any moment,
in a perfect suit to do it. It's the fun
part of the unknown of the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (02:46):
So we're going to go on chronologic order. Let's go back.
Emily Tisch Sussman (02:48):
You grew up on a farm.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (02:50):
I did grow up on a farm. I grew up
on a farm in Shropshire, which is on the Welsh border,
in rural England, on a farm that's been in my
father's family for generations. Mixed farm. We were talking about agriculture.
Your husband has a farm, but we had sheep, we
had cattle, we had wheat, barley, oats, and it was
an amazing place to grow up, very rural and very
(03:13):
beautiful and a kind of real sense of root. But
what's interesting about my I guess my upbringing is that
my mum is German, which is not what you would
expect from somebody who grew up in rural England. And
she met my dad because she was in ou Pair
in the sixties and they met and then he was
in the army and he met her again in Germany
and had a world with romance, and she came to
(03:33):
rural England. But because I was the eldest, her English
actually wasn't so great. So German is my first language,
and I grew up bilingual, and I actually think that
was a sort of big part of who I am,
because I grew up speaking two languages. Always loved languages,
and my parents are big to holiday every year as
we would go and see my grandmother in Germany. She
lived in the south of Germany. And when I was
(03:54):
in second grade, so seven, doing second and fifth grade,
my parents did something that when I became a parent,
I thought was truly extraordinary. So they sent me to
spend between Christmas and Easter with my grandmother and I
went to school in Germany. And I went to the
local elementary school in Germany for two and a half
three months and was just part of the class because
I went there several years in a row, I had
(04:15):
friends there and so I had this kind of life
in Germany for a few months of the year, and
then I went back to my local primary school in England,
and that from that, I think came a sort of
life long love of travel and a lifelong love of
understanding different countries. And I always knew I wanted to
live and work outside the UK. What about it drew you?
I think seeing that from a very early age that
(04:38):
there was such a different life than what I had
in rural Shropshire because my grandmother lived in a suburb
of not a huge town, but on a lake in
a suburb of a town, and it was just a
quite completely different lifetime. I would go off and the
school was very different, and my friends were very different,
and it was a sort of sense, I think, to
have a sort of seven eight that you could kind
(04:59):
of in different ecosystems if you will. I mean, I
didn't think of it like that then, but it would.
It was definitely the beginning of I was determined to
learn lots of languages, and I was determined to travel.
Emily Tisch Sussman (05:09):
The fields that you're in now, in economics, in journalism,
in worldwide perspective are very intellectual fields. Did you see
seeds of that in your childhood or when did that
turn on for you?
Zanny Minton Beddoes (05:23):
Very early on, I knew I wanted to experience other places.
I wanted to go to lots of different I knew
I didn't want to just live and work in England.
In fact, when I was, you know, six or seven eight,
maybe people would say, well, you know, as you ask kids,
what do you what do you want to be when
you grow up? And I said, I want to be
a flight attendant because it was the only thing I
could think of that involved traveling to lots of places.
Then I was I grew a bit older, and I thought,
maybe be something like a diplomat, you know i'd want.
(05:44):
But I always knew I wanted to be in lots
of different places, and I learned everyone learned French in
English in England. But I was incredibly lucky. At secondary school,
I went to a boarding school about an hour from
my parents, which was not a neither particularly academic school,
but it was it was a great school. I liked it,
and as it happens, we had a teacher there who
(06:04):
was an elderly gentleman who had been a baron in all.
His family was an ennobled family in the former Soviet Union,
and he had moved them to Wales and he taught Russian.
And that was another kind of completely weird thing to
how why on earth would you be able to learn
Russian in the school in the middle of nowhere in England.
Emily Tisch Sussman (06:22):
But I did.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (06:22):
I learned Russian and from that decided I applied to
university and I was I guess I was reasonably intelligent.
So I my school which had they said you should
apply to Oxford. So I applied to Oxford and managed
to get in, and then wanted to travel before I
did that, So it took a year out and persuaded
my father that I should be allowed to go traveling.
(06:43):
And my friend's quite traditional and he said, well, you
need to be able to have some skills so that
you can earn some money. If you're traveling, you need
to raise the money to go. So I worked for
six months in various odd jobs, but the contract was
that I needed to learn to type and I needed
to learn to cook, which shows you how wonderfully old
fashion he was.
Emily Tisch Sussman (07:00):
So I did the only skills one would need, the
only skills that a young woman would need.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (07:05):
But actually actually it was really quite useful because I
learned to touch type. In those days, I had a
month's crash course and you had to pass this course.
It was at some very shady typing school in London.
You had to do sixty words a minute for five
minutes with fewer than five mistakes, and then you've got
the diploma. And if you've got the diploma, you could
become what was called a temp which was a temporary typist.
(07:27):
And so my first job, very first job, was in
the typing pool at the Crown Court in sovo In, London,
and from which I actually got fired, which was a
little embarrassing. On my fourth day I went, I went
out to lunch with a boyfriend or a Wanabe boyfriend,
and we came back. I came back twenty minutes late,
and that was it. I got fired. But anyway, this
so I raised the money and then with those skills,
(07:48):
I went traveling and I spent seven I went to
Hong Kong, I went to Australia. I went to New
Zealand and came back via La the West Coast, and
that was my first taste of the US, and I
remember then completely loving the US and went to university,
did a bunch of traveling. Through university. In those days,
you didn't have to do things like internships, and so
every vacation I would go and earn the money and
(08:09):
then I would go traveling and then at the end
of my I guess my third year, I really didn't
know what to do. I applied for the Foreign Office.
The diplomat thing was still there, so I applied for that.
But I also had a professor who she was an
amazing tutor, and she said, there's a thing called the
Kennedy scholarshis you should apply for them. And the Kennedy
Scholarship is kind of like a reserve reverse road scholarship.
It's a scholarship that British young people couldn't go to Harvard.
(08:32):
And amazingly I got one and went off to Harvard.
And that was the kind of life changing moment. Oh,
a life changing how well, first off, going to university
in the US was just going to be in the US.
This was nineteen eighty nine. Was an amazing experience. I
went with a friend and I didn't know her that
well before we went, but she and I were the
same year at Oxford, and we rented an apartment, very
(08:55):
small apartment in Summerville, which is not far from Harvard,
and we then were suddenly thrown into a marriage graduate school,
which is you know, I was at the Kennedy School,
which is an amazing, credible experience, people from all over
the world, a whole different way of learning. So that
was really exciting. Was the first time I had sort
of seen how an American educational system worked. I remember
just being amazed by everything. And then at the end
(09:17):
of that year, again I was wondering what should I do.
And then internships are very important because Americans even then
toook internships very seriously. And I again didn't know what
to do until someone said to me, there is a
professor Jeffrey Sachs who was at the Economics Department, is
taking some interns to Poland. This was nineteen ninety, just
after the Berlin War had fallen to work in the
(09:38):
Ministry of Finance as part of a group for the
reformist finance minister for the first post communist government. And
he said, why don't you this friend of Mineset, why
don't you go and see if you can get a
part of this group. And I went to Professor Sax's
office hours knocked on the door and he said, well,
actually I got my interns. It's full. And I then
(09:58):
I was I said, okay, I'll try my pitch and
I said, well, you know, I Poland has a big
agricultural sector. And I know all about agriculture because I
grew up on a farm. And Polish is kind of
a bit like Russian and a bit like German, and
I speak Russian and German, and so I think you
should take me. And anyway, the kind of I guess
the Kutzpo was enough and he took me. And that
was actually the really life changing thing going to work
(10:21):
in Poland in the summer of nineteen ninety, which was
less than a year after the war came down as
this country moved from communism to capitalism, and the government
of the finance minister was called Lesheg Basovich, and he
was leading this economic reform program which is called shock therapy.
And what was meant by shock therapy is that they
(10:42):
essentially lifted all price controls, lifted all tariffs, freed up
the economy kind of almost overnight, and so you really
saw free markets in action. And when I went there,
Poland was very heavily bombed during the war, so it's not,
at least wasn't then the world's most beautiful city. And
in the kind of along the main street were these
big shops that were the old Soviet era shops, which
(11:05):
essentially were very drab and they had long, long shelves
either nothing on or you know, exactly the same tin
of piltures kind of all along the shelf. It was
a perfect example of what you imagined the command economy
of communist economy to be like. But outside on the pavement,
on the sidewalk, as you would say, were stall after
stall of people who had driven in their Soviet made
(11:27):
cars to Berlin, which is not very far from Poland,
because all prices had been freed and these were traders
and they'd gone and they'd bought bananas, oranges, fresh food,
women's underwear, everything that they knew people actually wanted to buy,
and were setting up shops. And this one was setting
up stalls on the pavement. And for me, I still
can kind of visualize it very powerfully. It was a
(11:47):
real sense of this is what happens when you free
up prices, this is what happens when you free markets.
And I had been studying economics and I thought, my god,
this is what happens, and that was a just a
really pivotal moment. I can see what happens when you
reform an economy and I can see what happens when
capitalist forces start stirring. And so I took a semester off.
(12:10):
I worked for Jeff Sax and his team for you know,
that semester that I took off, and I was I
moved from the Ministry of Finance to what was called
the Ministry of Foreign Economic Cooperation and was the sort
of assistant speech writer to the minister. And they were
then the polls were negotiating a kind of agreement with
the European Union, the new Polish government, and so I
(12:32):
worked on that and I helped them, and then I
went back and finished my degree. But that kind of
made me think, I want to I want to use,
you know, what I've learned about economics to work in
economic policy, because I could see what happened. And I
think it also all I probably didn't realize all the time.
It reinforced that sense of the power of markets, the
(12:54):
power of freedom, the power of the individual, which you
know is really what underpins the economist, right. I mean,
we are that's what we stand for. And I feel
it very very viscerally, and I think it comes from
that experience. And when I look back now, you know,
whatever it is along many decades later, that moment after
the Berlin wilfell with the collapse of communism was the
(13:17):
sort of beginning really of an arc and an era
which is sort of now coming to an end, because
it was an era of taris coming down, economies opening up,
emerging markets, globalization, all the things that are now in
the debate in this country seen as often bad words.
That era started at the beginning of my career, and
so I feel it's very striking that now as i'm
(13:40):
sort of, you know, towards the et monomic and not
at the end of my career, but towards further into it,
that all of those things that I felt very visceral
and I still feel very viscerally and now much more challenged.
Emily Tisch Sussman (13:50):
You ended up working over the next couple of years
in macroeconomic programs in Africa and Central and Eastern Europe,
so you really went to very many any different countries,
in different and different regions that were in different phases
of economic growth. Were you looking for more opportunities to
learn to build upon it, or did you think that
(14:11):
you like, this is now my career and I'm going
to pull the strings, so to speak.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (14:15):
So I knew I wanted to work in economic policy.
I went back from poland finished my degree, then went
to work actually in Ukraine for a couple of months.
I wrote, I co wrote, and my only academic paper
published in a very minor journal. Though my co author
won a Nobel Prize. But there's nothing to do with me.
(14:35):
But that was we were in Kiev and we were
looking at how Ukrainian state farms were being privatized or
were being broken up. And it was it was with
Simon Johnson, who subsequently worked won the Nobel Prize. He
was in Cambridge. I was doing the field work, and
I went out and we wrote a questionnaire and I
basically went to I think it was almost one hundred
of these state farms and asked these questions, and they
(14:58):
who is this woman in her early twenties. These were
these were rural Soviet type communist state farm directors, like,
who the heck is this woman coming? So they, first
of all, they wud insist that I drank loads of
either vodka or there's other thing, this other drink which
is like firewater even worse. And often I was the
first European who'd been in these places and actually in
(15:19):
one place. It was since the Germans coming east during
the war. I mean it was it was quite It
was quite striking going to these places.
Emily Tisch Sussman (15:26):
Feel like, let me switch to my Russian and not
my German yet, yeah, because at that point.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (15:30):
It was actually flying this big Russian. I mean I
did use my Russian. Then you wouldn't do that now,
but I did. And that was a sort of it
was an interview. I wrote this paper, but then I
thought I want to carry on doing economic policy, and
I had when I went back finished my in my
last semester, I was, you know, everyone at graduate school
was applying for their postgraduate school work, and I kind
(15:51):
of then thought I better apply to what everybody else
does too. So I applied for consulting jobs, and I
applied for investment banks, and I applied to the IMS
and the IMA, being the sort of prime international fireman,
if you will, economic fireman. And I got a job
at the IMF, but I turned it down to go
to accept a job at Goldman Sachs. And then that
was in January February. I was going to start in
(16:12):
gold six in the summer went to Ukraine and then
suddenly thought what am I doing? Why am I going
to Wall Street when I could actually really learn about
economic policy? And so I then said, actually, wasn't going
to go to Goldman Sacks told him I wasn't coming,
and grolled and went back to the IMF and said,
can I actually come after all? And I had originally
been going to work for them on post Soviet countries,
and they said, yes you can, but you're going to
have to work on West Africa. You'll have to work
(16:34):
in the Africa department. So I spent a year working
on Marley and Senegal, which had absolutely not been my plan.
This is a very long answer to your question. But
it's not like I sat and I must go and
learn about West Africa. I was completely I was told
I was working there, but that was fascinating. It was
the first time I'd been in Zimbabwe briefly, but I
hadn't really didn't know Africa at all, and worked on
(16:56):
these two countries. Must have gone five or six times.
That was, I mean, real poverty. Bamaco, the capital of
Marley then, had really only one paved road which went
from the airport to the hotel and the main hotel
and to the presidential palace. And we were there a
team of us from the IMF, and we would go
several times a year trying to work out what the
(17:16):
country's balance of payments was, where the economy wasn't, how
much foreign assistance they needed, and how it would all
add up. And I learned a ton if it was
an amazing training. I learned the mechanics of how you
work out economic policy and the mechanics of how you
build a balance of payments, all of those sort of
that was back in the day of Excel spreadsheets. But
(17:36):
hours and hours and hours with these things. But I
realized after a couple of years there that it's a
big bureaucracy. It's a big international bureaucracy, full of incredibly
talented people. But I just realized that I wasn't cut
out for working in a big institutional bureaucracy. And it
was one of those eingsine you're at a certain grade,
and you know that if you've worked very hard and
very well, in five years time, you will be at
this grade, and in ten years time it will be
(17:58):
at this grade. And I guess I was a sort
of restless young person in a hurry, and I just
I can't, you know, and the youngest person on the
team never says in a thing, and then you know
it was. It was very formal but incredibly incredibly talented people.
So I just after I finished the sort of it's
called the Economist program, it was a two year training program,
I decided that actually this was not for me. Almost
(18:19):
went back into investment banking, decided not to again, and
then thought, well, maybe actually what I would really like
to do is economic journalism, because what I liked most
about when I was in both in West Africa for
the IMF and there on my second year, I worked
in Kyrgystan, which was then, you know, a country in
Central Asia, again, a new country. We were building its
(18:40):
balance of payments, building all of the sort of statistical
infrastructure for the country, and I realized that although I
was okay at the spreadsheets, I was not a No
one would ever call me a great model builder. I
was okay at it, but what I was what I
liked doing, was talking to all of the officials, figuring
out what was going on and then kind of writing
up what had happened. And the IMF has a particular jargon,
(19:01):
so it was not the world's most beautiful English, but
I would write this up, and I was reasonably good
at doing that. And then I actually Economic Joermalism would
be interesting. And I'd done student journalism at Oxford. I
edited the student magazine, so I can write. So I
went to applied to the Economists, and applied to the
Financial Times, and went to the Economist, and you know,
nearly thirty years later here I am. So that's the
(19:23):
positive history.
Emily Tisch Sussman (19:24):
Did you have any mentors, advisors, anyone talking you through.
I mean, it's a fairly large decision.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (19:31):
So I've had lots of incredible opportunities, like you know,
the wonderful Baron Fonda Parlan who was my Russian teacher,
or Mary McCaulay, who was my wonderful professor at Oxford,
who said, should really apply for this scholarship. I didn't
have anyone where I sort of thought about the decision
I had. In fact, I had a friend who talked
me out of going to dog Goldman Sacks and going
(19:52):
to the IMATH, who said to me, you know, you
can always go to gold with sex. You'll never go
to the IMF if we don't go now. But it
was not it wasn't a sort of I didn't have
a a mentor in the sense of a single person
who had helped me all the way through. But I've
always you know, when people ask me, now, what advice,
we must ask you this, What advice do you give
a younger person? I always say the same thing, and
I really mean it, which is just grab every opportunity
(20:14):
You'll almost the only thing you will regret is something
you don't do. That's basically my philosophy. The only thing
I regret is things that I don't do. I now
think I should have gone to work on Wall Street
for a couple of years. It would have been really
interesting to have done that, and I never did do it,
And so I was optimizing options. So I would always
say I'm going to do something because it will maximize
the options of what I can do later on. I
(20:36):
want to close off anything. I could never work out
what I wanted to be, so I just wanted to
make sure I could keep as many possible options going,
and that was why I ended up taking. So I
never I didn't sit and say I want to be
a journalist, although I had done student journalism, but I
rended up there through this process of keeping options open.
Emily Tisch Sussman (20:58):
Stay tuned for more of Zenny after the break, Do
you remember what some of the opportunities were that you
(21:18):
grabbed when you first got into the newsroom.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (21:21):
So when ized to join The Economist, I was hired
by the the then editor to I was put in
the foreign department because he was a man who believed
as a rigorous economics and I was, by the stands
of journalism. Because I had some economics training, I was
considered sort of rigorous and quantitative. So I joined the
Foreign department, which was run by lifelong foreign correspondent types
(21:42):
who had beautiful, elegant pros but were probably not so
focused on looking at spreadsheets. And so I went in
as the kind of wantku looked at spreadsheets and learned
how to write, which was My colleagues at the Economist
are include some just extraordinarily good writers. And I'm I mean,
I'm a good writer, but I know one would ever
call me a great writer, least of all me, And
(22:04):
so I learned. I learned that first of all, and
that was a that was a kind of a sort
of tough training, you realize, particularly when you came when
I came to the IMF, which is a wonderful institution,
will never be known for its pros, and so I
arrived writing this sort of slightly wooden jargon that one
had to learn how to write. And there again I
had the kind of Okay, I'm going to grab every opportunity.
(22:25):
And I the editor who is called former editors called
Bill Emmett, created a new job for me, which was
Emerging Markets correspondent, and we hadn't had one before, and
so I basically could write my own job description. And
so I would think, where's an interesting country that I'd
like to go and understand how its economy works. So
I remember going to Chile early on and spending a
(22:47):
week there and then came back and wrote quite a
long article about it, and I thought, this is actually
sort of half of It's exactly what I used to
do at the IMF. Go to a country, meet all
the policy makers, because the economist is an amazing kind of
calling card. So I was then in my whatever late twenties,
and you know, I'd see the Foreign minister, and i'd
see the central bank governor because they care about the economist,
(23:08):
and then I'd come back. And if had I been
at the IMF, I would have come back being the
junior member of a team that would have written a
long report, But as a journalist, I came back and
I wrote an article. I went to the Czech Republic,
I went all over the place, and that the most interesting.
Relatively early on, I think it was ninety four, maybe
the editor said to me, do you want to go
and write a special report which was a long twelve
(23:30):
fourteen thousand word article on the Caspian, the Caucusus and
the Caspian because at that point there was a lot
of oil and gas. Then there was quite a lot
of excitement about it, and I thought, so, why not
so and you got six weeks to do this, And
I went on this trip from Georgia Azerbay, John took Menistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,
(23:53):
and just went through all these extraordinary places and then
wrote a fourteen thousand word piece on what they came.
And that was I remember thinking that this is people
pay me to do this. It's amazing. Did it ever
feel like a little unsafe to be traveling alone as
a woman in these developing nations?
The only time I've ever felt seriously unsafe is was
(24:17):
actually before I became a journalist, when I was still
actually an undergraduate. I was at Oxford and I one
of the summers. There used to be a visa you
could get and it may still exist to work in
the United States as a student. So I was called Bunach,
I remember it. And I got this visa and I
came over to the US. It was nineteen eighty eight
and I worked in New Orleans, what was it called
(24:37):
the Mediterranean Cafe on Decatur Street as a waitress, and
that was an amazing month to earn the money to
then go on traveling. And it was the It was
a cafe. The Mediterranean Cafe was run by a wonderful
to Greek brothers. But nineteen eighty eight it was the
Republican Convention in New Orleans, so I remember vividly they
took down all the pictures of du Carcass and put
(24:58):
up George Bush for the convention because they knew that
would be better for the customers. And I had a
fellow way to called Chuck. And Chuck and I divvied
up the cleontele so that when the you know, when
a group of men came in, I took them, and
when the women came in, he did, and we would
both make better Tips that way, and that was a
I never felt really unsafe in Naorns, but it was
a very luk I was a real eye opener. No
(25:19):
we lived. I lived on Decatur Street, right in the
heart of the French Quarter, which is a you know,
there's a lot of tough stuff there, a lot of drugs,
there's a lot of people who were very serious problems,
a lot of drunk. It was eye opening. But then
from there I went on and went all the way
through Central America, through Mexico, through Guatemala, and I was
traveled for a bit of it. I traveled with a
(25:40):
friend and then I crackers. Really. I decided that I
wanted to go to Nicaragua to Managua overland from New
York and that was my goal. But to do that
you had to go through our Salvador, which was in
the middle of a civil war at that point, and
I was determined to do it. So I went into
Ol Salvador. My friend who I was traveling companion I
(26:00):
was traveling with at that point, he said, look, you,
this is insane and he left and went back to England.
My parents hadn't heard anything from me for three weeks.
They just knew that my traveling companion was back in England,
and eventually I got to Ponduras into Taguzaglper and it
had been I mean, nothing terrible, but it had been
a little scary at times. But in Taguza Glper, which
was at least then was a pretty grim place. I
(26:23):
was staying in some hostel one night on the ground
floor and there was a very sketchy kind of night
watchman type who tried to get into my room. And
that's like the one time and I remember barricading every
chest of drawers, absolutely everything against the door and thinking
that this is this is going to be I'm going
(26:44):
to get raped, this is going to be this is
going to be it. And actually he didn't get in,
and first light I was out of there, and that
was fie. But that was a long answer. That is
literally I think the only time I have been I
have felt in a very very potentially sticky situation.
Emily Tisch Sussman (26:58):
So part of the base of the show is that
we talk about the intersection of the personal and the professional.
So we've covered very well to tell excellent stories. I
would really picture them all, you know. It covered a
lot about the professional side that what brought you into
each of these jobs. I want to try to bring
in the personal. At the same time, I.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (27:19):
Feel like I've been going on about personal stuff. You know,
it's so funny as an tell you stories.
Emily Tisch Sussman (27:24):
And I thought to myself as we were coming into this,
I'm guessing that you know, you came up at a
time in journalism which was a real old boys club,
in economics, which was very male dominated.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (27:35):
That even this might feel a little personal for you. Yeah.
People often ask me, you know, you worked in these
very male dominated environments. What was it like did you
was it very difficult, did you have a hard time?
And you know, I guess I got used to being
in an environment where it was very male looking at
I remember when I would go to a conference that
(27:55):
would be a sea of pale male faces. But I
can honestly say that The Economist is an extraordinary meritocratic place,
and I never ever felt anything other than that, you know,
people of the quality of people's work was what mattered,
and it was a great place to work. It is
a great, I hope for my colleagues, a great place
(28:16):
to work. It's a small We're now three hundred people
in the editorial side of The Economist, and when I
was there, when I first started, it was barely just
over one hundred so it was a very small place,
a very collegial place. And that comes from if you
read The Economist, you will know that the our articles
are unsigned, and so there's a kind of collect sense
(28:36):
of this is a collective endeavor. And when I first started,
all The Economist was was a weekly print publication, and
we all worked together, and it had a very very
strong Mistreeder call and was truly meritocratic. Now if you
looked at it, it's certainly when I joined, it was
very male, very white, very sort of a lot of
posh people, but the sense of it was very a
(28:58):
very very meritocratic place. It's now got much bigger. But
as a result, I genuinely have never I've always felt
that if you do good work, it's going to be rewarded.
And so while I've had, you know, lots and lots
of interesting experiences over the last twenty five years, I
haven't felt that I've had to kind of climb up
(29:18):
a ladder that would have been there was more difficult
because I was a woman. I genuinely haven't. That said,
now I've become much more aware in this position of
a how few women there are leading organizations, whether it's
companies or any organization. And that's all I feel a
(29:38):
kind of sense of responsibility that I didn't really think about,
you know, two decades ago, to try and convince more
people to do this, to try and not start sounding
very pretentious, but not just to sort of be a
role model, but actually to try and you know, change that,
because I think it is kind of shocking how few
organizations are led by women, and how few I mean
(30:00):
there are at the top of most things. And I
think that is it is changing, but it's not changing
fast enough.
Emily Tisch Sussman (30:05):
And I think even just an awareness that if you
don't have, like if you're looking at global economics, you
certainly need to have quite a few women and you
do well.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (30:14):
Christine Lagarde who used to who was, you know, French
finance minister. Then she was head of the IMF. She's
now head of the European Central Bank. She had that
famous quip she said if it had been Lehman's sisters,
they would not have been a financial crisis.
Emily Tisch Sussman (30:29):
After the break More from Zanni, is there something that
can be something that we talked about, or can be
something totally different that at the time you saw as
(30:51):
like a real negative or a low point in your career,
and now you see it as having really launched you
to the success you are now.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (30:57):
I think I've become a different kind of person. I
started off with a sort of I've always been very competitive,
but it was a restless competitiveness. I wanted to be
good at what I was doing, but I wasn't quite
sure whether what I was doing. I was always wondering
whether what somebody else was doing was better than what
I was doing, and white what should I be good
at that too? And it was it was a sort
of debilitating, that restless competitiveness. And I've been so lucky.
(31:21):
We've talked about a bit of it, but I've been
able to have as my job going around the world
trying to understand different countries, trying to hearing different people's stories,
trying to make sense of it. And now I feel
a sense that the values that the economist stands for,
that I passionately believe in individual freedom, free markets are
kind of under attack, actually, and so I now have
(31:43):
a very strong sense of what we do matters in
a really fundamental sense, and it drives me, and it's
not that's not come from any hardship earlier on, but
I've one I feel that it's really really important, and
I think I've become much more aware that I know
what I'm good at and what I'm not good at.
I'm an okay writer. I'm certainly not a great writer
(32:04):
compared to all my colleagues, but I am quite good
at helping frame arguments, and I'm I think, quite good
at getting my getting people to work together to produce
really good stuff. And that's what I now get a
lot of satisfaction from. So it's less about individual stuff.
It's about how to bring my colleagues, whether it's five
(32:25):
of them or three hundred of them together to be
fired up by what fires me up about what we're
trying to do, about what the economist believes in at
this time. So you know, if we're making money subscriptions
are growing, that's great, but what we're doing is really important.
So there are just and I can This for me
was one of the most powerful things. It was. A
year ago I got a letter from a gentleman who
(32:46):
was I think it was half Iranian, half American, who
had been a political prisoner in Evan prison at Wilful
Prison in Tehran, and he sent me a note saying
that he thought I might like to know that while
he was there, the Economist had kept him going, and
that there had been a kind of underground railroad kind
of delivery of The Economist and the lengths that he
(33:08):
and his fellow prisoners had gone to to get the
Economist and to pass it to others. And I read
that think we published it last year, and I thought,
this is what makes what we do worth work. And
it wasn't that I had some hardship that got me
to that, But I've been lucky enough to be able
for thirty years to do what I love doing, and
now to be able to lead an organization that I
(33:29):
truly believe in what we do. I think it really matters,
and if we can have we can make that difference
in people's lives, you know, it's all really worth it.
Emily Tisch Sussman (33:37):
Why Why is The Economist so important now?
Zanny Minton Beddoes (33:39):
Because The Economist is a publication. We call ourselves a newspaper,
but increasingly because we have podcasts, we have videos, we
have a digital presence, I think it's a better called
a publication. We were founded in eighteen forty three to
fight for free trade. There was something called the corn
Laws in the United Kingdom at that point, which were
basically tariffs which were kept in place by to essentially
(34:02):
protect rich, aristocratic run farms and meant that poor people
had to pay higher prices for their bread. And there
was a big movement to get rid of them, the
free trade movement, and the Economist was essentially created to
fight for free trade, to fight for openness, to fight
for traditional English liberal values. And we've done that ever
since eighteen forty three. And you know, you look around
(34:23):
the world now and those values openness to immigration, free trade,
free markets are increasingly under attack. Look at what's happening
in this country right now. And when I started this job,
when I became editor in chief in twenty fifteen, the
kind of worldview that the Economist is associated with globalization,
freer trade, open markets was kind of a establishment view.
(34:47):
It was a standard view. But ten years later it's
very much not. Ten years later, you have populism, you
have people protectionism, you have people who want to put
up barriers. You have a foreign policy which is much
more transactional, you know, one country against the other, and
so the kind of world that my career has been
able to watch essentially be created after the fall of
(35:10):
the Berlin Wall, after the collapse of communism, I think
is now under threat in a way that's very striking
across the world. Whether it's the tensions between the US
and China, whether it's the increase in tariffs from that
the Trump administration is doing, whether it's intervention in economies,
whether it's the attitude to immigrants. Across the board, there
is a moving away from those kind of traditional English
(35:32):
liberal and I have to say English books is American
liberals something slightly different English Liberal values. And so I
think what the Economist does, which is not just provide
superb analysis and journalism, and you know, we're not partisan,
we're rigorous, we're fact checked. It's really very very rigorous
good journalism, but it also does it in the sort
(35:53):
of founded on these values, and we make the case
for this kind of world, which I passionately believe is
about world than the one that we're heading towards.
Emily Tisch Sussman (36:01):
So it matters this phase that we're moving into now.
I just have to get your take on this. Do
you think we are moving into a phase sort of
the decline of US superpower and the rise of Chinese Like,
is it inevitable?
Zanny Minton Beddoes (36:13):
No, No, it's absolutely non inevitable. First of all, China,
China has done an extraordinary job at reducing poverty and
becoming a successful economy. But China has real challenges. It's
a huge demographic challenge. China's aging incredibly quickly. China's economy
has huge problems. So I don't think one should sort
of fetishize how strong China is. What I think is
a problem. And I also think the United States. And
(36:35):
I'm as I said to you, I came first to
the West Coast when before I was even at university,
I spent most of my adult life living in the US.
My kids are American citizens. I love this country. But
the reason I love this country is that it is
a country where people come. It's a magnet for people
all over the world who want to make the best
of their lives in America. And it's this magic combination
(36:57):
of an incredibly deep capital market, a competitive economy, the
best most talented people, the best universities. That is this
magic cocktail that has created not just the sort of
wealth that is the United States, but what I see
the US doing now and it's bipartisan, it's both parties.
Is because of the fear of China, the US is
essentially becoming something very different, putting up tariff walls, putting
(37:19):
on export restrictions, you know, becoming skeptical of migrant Look
at what the administration is doing for the best universities.
It's I think, turning it's back on some of the
things that have made this country right great, and in
some ways the US is becoming a little bit more Chinese, more,
a greater kind of government, control, less open, and less
(37:39):
and for me, that is tragic. The US has, Yes,
China's competitor, Yes, China's an authoritarian regime. Yes they've caught up. Yes,
there are certain areas where you know, the US needs
to make sure it stays ahead. But turning sort of
fear of China into a debilitating fetish is I think
something that will not lead to good posy in this country.
Emily Tisch Sussman (38:02):
Thank you so much for joining us and this is phenomenal.
Zanny Minton Beddoes (38:05):
Thank you for having me. Thank you gag it to
me so.
Emily Tisch Sussman (38:07):
Great to meet you. Thank you so much for listening
to this special episode of she Pivots, recorded live at
the Aspen Ideas festival. The best way to stay up
to date with Zanni is to subscribe to The Economist
or to follow her on Twitter at zannimb Thanks for
(38:28):
listening to this episode of she Pivots. I hope you
enjoyed it, and if you did, leave us a rating
and tell your friends about us. To learn more about
our guests, follow us on Instagram at she pivots the Podcast,
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pivots thepodcast dot com. This episode was produced and edited
(38:54):
by Emily Atavelosk, with sound editing and mixing from Nina Pollock.
Audio production and social media by Hannah Cousins, research by
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