Mary Childs 2004

Mary Childs, class of 2004, was a 13-year student at St. Catherine’s. After graduating from Washington & Lee University in 2008 with a degree in Business Journalism, she traveled through 16 countries in 14 months as a Watson Fellow, painting portraits to examine “the way faces change over various terrains.” Her curiosity about cultures, conflicts and the world economy cemented her career as a business journalist.

 Along with the impressive career highlights I’ll detail below, Childs is the author of the bestselling book, The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All, described as “the deeply-investigated story of how one visionary, dogged investor [a former gambler] changed American finance forever.”

 Childs was named a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Honoree in 2015, which recognizes “innovators disrupting the status quo for public good.” In 2018 she was chosen as one of six American fellows for the China-US Journalists Exchange conference, where journalists explored the important bilateral relationship between the world's two largest economies under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump and President Xi Jinping.  Now, as then, with China ranked as America's largest goods trading partner and America being the top destination for Chinese exports, the immense volume of trade between the two countries generates continued conflicts.  The journalists met with government officials, business leaders, academics, journalists, non-governmental organizations and other members of the Chinese and American communities, giving them a firsthand look at US-China relations; economic growth and challenges in each country; stability and security in the Asia-Pacific region; and social, cultural and political issues in China and the United States.

Childs has worked at the Financial Times, Bloomberg News, covering corporate bonds and credit derivatives; and Barron's magazine, covering the alternatives industry, the bond market, and capitalism. She's written about the pioneering of time as an asset class, billionaire’s proposals to solve inequality, and diversity and discrimination in the finance industry. 

 

Childs joined NPR’s Planet Money podcast in 2019 as a co-host, writer and artist. In 2023, she was awarded an Arthur F. Burns Fellowship from the International Center for Journalists, which provides talented young U.S., German and Canadian journalists the opportunity to live and work in each other’s country.

 

 In recognition of the work she has done to cover issues critical to our national and international economy, we are proud to name Mary Childs as the 2024 Distinguished Young Alumna recipient.  

 

Mary recently welcomed twin boys and is unable to join us today. I invite Mary’s sister, Britt Childs Staley, class of 2001 to the stage to accept the award on her behalf.