Jessica Lessin

Jessica Lessin
BornJessica Elizabeth Vascellaro
(1983-05-11) May 11, 1983 (age 41)
OccupationJournalist, businesswoman
NationalityAmerican
Alma materHarvard College (BA)
Years active2005 - current
SpouseSamuel Lessin[1]
Children3
Website
www.theinformation.com

Jessica E. Lessin is an American journalist who serves as editor-in-chief of the technology website The Information, which she founded in December 2013.[2][3][4] Lessin had previously spent eight years at The Wall Street Journal covering the technology and media industries.[5][6][7]

Early life and education

Born Jessica Elizabeth Vascellaro, her father, Jerome Vascellaro, is the COO of private equity firm TPG Capital and a trustee of Brown University.[8][9] She attended New Canaan Country School in Connecticut before enrolling at Harvard University in 2001.[10] She graduated from Harvard College in 2005, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in history. While at Harvard, she wrote for The Harvard Crimson and served as an executive editor.[11][12]

Career

After graduating from Harvard, she completed an internship at the Wall Street Journal and later became a full-time staff member.[10] During her tenure at the publication, Lessin wrote more than a thousand articles and news stories while covering Apple,[13] Google,[14] Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and other global technology companies.[12] She was part of the team that was a 2012 Pulitzer Finalist for a series on digital privacy.[15] The team won a public service award from the Society of Professional Journalists for the same series. She has appeared on CNBC, NPR, CNN, Charlie Rose, and is a regular speaker at international conferences.[16][17]

Lessin left the Wall Street Journal in 2013 to establish The Information, an online tech publication based in San Francisco.[18] Lessin was listed as an Influential Woman in Technology by Business Insider in 2014.[19]

By 2017, The Information expanded the markets it covered, opened offices in Hong Kong and New York City, and had grown to 22 staff members.[12] That same year, Lessin announced that The Information was launching a business accelerator aimed at building subscription-based news organizations.[20]

In June 2023, Jessica Lessin together with Sam Lessin, Dave Morin and Brit Morin started a podcast called "More or Less" where they discuss the latest news from Silicon Valley.

Personal life

In 2012, Lessin married Samuel Lessin, a former Facebook VP and current startup founder and investor.[21][22] Their first child was born in early 2017. Both Lessin and her husband are close friends with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.[23]

References

  1. ^ "The 19 Hottest Power Couples in Tech". Financial Post.
  2. ^ Mathew Ingram. "The Founder of The Information on What Media Companies Are Doing Wrong". Fortune.
  3. ^ "Lack of centralized cloud infrastructure team hampering Apple's development of iCloud services – report". Apple Insider. By Katie Marsal, November 24, 2014.
  4. ^ "Apple Watch: Apple Silent On Smartwatch’s Battery Life". International Business Times, By Thomas Halleck on September 9, 2014.
  5. ^ "New Venture for AllThingsD Journalists". New York Times, By RAVI SOMAIYAJAN. 2, 2014.
  6. ^ Luis Suarez-Villa (December 9, 2014). Corporate Power, Oligopolies, and the Crisis of the State. SUNY Press. pp. 243–. ISBN 978-1-4384-5485-6.
  7. ^ "Fusion Set to Name Director of Media Innovation". New York Times, By EMILY STEEL, September 7, 2014.
  8. ^ "Who We Are | TPG".
  9. ^ "Jessica Vascellaro, Samuel Lessin". The New York Times. September 23, 2012.
  10. ^ a b Merissa Marr. "Inside (The) Information". Columbia Journalism Review.
  11. ^ Michael Firestone; Stephanie Kendall; Jessica Vascellaro. "The Case For Senior Gift". The Harvard Crimson.
  12. ^ a b c Lucia Moses. "How Jessica Lessin Used Her Reporting Chops to Build The Information". Digiday.
  13. ^ "It’s iTime: Apple gets to work on glass smartwatch". Irish Examiner, February 13, 2013. By Karen O'Shea
  14. ^ "Interview: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks Apple". iPhone Developers, December 5, 2012 | Chase Tillar
  15. ^ "The Pulitzer Prizes – Finalists". pulitzer.org.
  16. ^ Robert Andrews (March 20, 2014). "The Information's Jessica Lessin on building a subscription business – video". the Guardian.
  17. ^ "The future of news: know thy audience". the Guardian. March 19, 2014.
  18. ^ Eric Johnson (May 18, 2017). "Jessica Lessin Built a Business to Prove Information Doesn't Have to Be Free". Recode.
  19. ^ "Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter – Business Insider". Business Insider. May 18, 2014.
  20. ^ Brady Dale (July 28, 2017). "The Information's Founder Jessica Lessin Nudges News Past Its Funny Money Era". Observer.
  21. ^ Josh Constine (December 22, 2017). "Inside 'Fin,' the elite human/AI assistant". TechCrunch.
  22. ^ Alyson Shontell. "A Facebook Executive's Wedding was the Tech Networking Event of The Year". Business Insider.
  23. ^ Perlberg, Steven. "The Information's Jessica Lessin wants to build 'the next Wall Street Journal' over the next 50 years. Here's how she grew the tech site to about 45,000 paid subscribers". Business Insider. Retrieved October 28, 2022.