Photo credit: Ximena Ambriz
Leslie P. Norton is an Editorial Director; Sustainability, at Morningstar, the financial research and ratings firm that is one of the most trusted names among individual investors. There, she helps make sustainable investing comprehensible for retail investors and their advisors. She speaks frequently on the subject of sustainability, conducting webinars and fireside chats and moderating panel discussions at conferences.
Previously, she was a writer at Barron’s, the popular financial magazine, and Barrons.com. There, she oversaw coverage of sustainable investing, and of the widely read Q&A interview feature. She is known for her lively profiles of legendary investors such as Peter Lynch, Will Danoff and Joel Tillinghast, and Vanguard founder Jack Bogle, creator of the index fund. She has interviewed mathematician, and card counter Ed Thorp, poker champion Annie Duke, investment performance coach Denise Shull, Nobel laureates Joe Stiglitz, Dick Thaler and Robert Shiller, as well as countless investment luminaries.
Leslie served as Asia editor of Barron’s, and won a SABEW “Best in Business” award with Bill Alpert for a series of stories investigating fraudulent Chinese equities, which protected the savings of investors and pensioners by warning about deceptive stocks before they crashed. She has received fellowships from the East-West Center and the National Press Foundation.
Prior to Barron’s, Leslie worked as a researcher for an investment manager, and helped start the London bureau of Bloomberg News. She attended Yale College and Columbia University.
Born in Manila but raised in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, her interest in words began early. She was a contestant in the National Spelling Bee, where she misspelled the word “cucaracha,” placing fifth out of 79 contestants and receiving a prize of $100. Today, she is thrilled to serve on the board of Kundiman, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature. She lives in New York City with her son.