Discover the Best Books Written by Steve Coll

Steve Coll (born October 8, 1958) is an American journalist, academic, and executive. He is currently the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism. A staff writer for The New Yorker, he served as the president and CEO of the New America think tank from 2007 to 2012. 

He is the recipient of two Pulitzer Prize awards, two Overseas Press Club Awards, a PEN American Center John Kenneth Galbraith Award, an Arthur Ross Book Award, a Livingston Award, a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, a Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, and the Lionel Gelber Prize. From 2012 to 2013, he was a voting member of the Pulitzer Prize Board before continuing to serve in an ex officio capacity as the dean of the Columbia Journalism School.

Steve Coll was born on October 8, 1958, in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville, Maryland, in 1976. He moved to Los Angeles, California, and enrolled in Occidental College, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1980, he graduated cum laude with majors in English and history. Coll also attended the University of Sussex during his studies.

Coll is married to the journalist and poet Eliza Griswold. After college, Coll wrote for the Pasadena Weekly. He then wrote general-interest articles for California magazine. In 1985, he started working as a general assignment feature writer for The Washington Post for the paper's Style section. Two years later, he was promoted to serve as the financial correspondent for the newspaper based in New York City. 

He and David A. Vise collaborated on a series of reports scrutinizing the Securities and Exchange Commission, for which they received the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and the Gerald Loeb Award for Large Newspapers. In 1989, he moved to New Delhi, where he was appointed as the Post's South Asia bureau chief. He served as a foreign correspondent through 1995. Coll began working for the newspaper's Sunday magazine insert in 1995, serving as publisher of the magazine from 1996 to 1998. 

He was promoted to managing editor of the newspaper in 1998 and served in that capacity through 2004. He also served as an associate editor for the newspaper from late 2004 to August 2005. In September 2005, Coll joined the writing staff of The New Yorker. Based in Washington, D.C., he reported on foreign intelligence and national security.

On July 23, 2007, Coll was named as the next director of the New America Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. He has also contributed to the New York Review of Books, particularly about the war in Afghanistan. On June 25, 2012, Coll announced his resignation as President of the New America Foundation to pen a follow-up to Ghost Wars.

On October 23, 2012, Coll was elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board, administered by Columbia University. On March 18, 2013, Coll was announced to succeed Nick Lemann as the Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, effective July 1, 2013.