Amanda Bennett is an award-winning American journalist with a distinguished career spanning over four decades. She began at The Wall Street Journal in 1980, working there for 18 years as a reporter, the first woman to lead a national bureau as bureau chief in Atlanta, and assistant managing editor for news. From 1999 to 2003, she served at The Washington Post as city editor, investigations editor, and deputy managing editor, overseeing major projects including coverage of the D.C. sniper attacks and post-9/11 investigations. She then served as editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer from 2003 to 2006. After leaving Philadelphia, Bennett was vice president for editorial at McClatchy Newspapers (2006-2011), editor-in-chief of Bloomberg Markets magazine, and a senior editor at Bloomberg News. In September 2016, she was appointed Director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media's Voice of America, serving from 2017 to 2021 and managing international broadcasting amid controversies over editorial independence. She chaired the Pulitzer Prize Board from 2011 to 2015, advocating for journalism diversity and ethics, and has received numerous awards including the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism.