Jodi Kantor

Jodi Kantor (born April 21, 1975) is an American journalist.

She is a New York Times correspondent whose work has covered the workplace, technology, and gender.

She has been the paper's Arts & Leisure editor and covered two presidential campaigns, chronicling the transformation of Barack and Michelle Obama into the President and First Lady of the United States.

In 1996, Kantor graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University, with a degree in history.

She participated in the Dorot Fellowship in Israel from 1996 to 1997, where she studied Hebrew and worked with Israeli-Palestinian organizations in East Jerusalem, and later worked for a year as an Urban Fellow in Rudy Giuliani's Mayor's Office of Operations.

Later, Kantor attended Harvard Law School for one semester, taking a leave, to work in Washington, D.C., at Slate's office, where she later became the magazine's New York editor.

After corresponding with New York Times columnist Frank Rich about how that paper could improve its arts coverage, she was brought on as editor of the Arts and Leisure section by Howell Raines at age 28.

She is thought to be the youngest person to edit a section of the New York Times.

Under the guidance of Rich and others, she made the section more visual, added new features and more reporting and recruited writers like Emily Nussbaum, Jesse Green and Manohla Dargis.

In 2004 at the age of 28, she was named to Crain's New York Business "40 Under 40" list.

Kantor's 2006 story, "On the Job, Nursing Mothers Find a 2-Class System", on the class gap in breastfeeding inspired the creation of the first free-standing lactation stations, now installed in hundreds of airports, stadiums and other workplaces around the United States.

She has reported on the treatment of women on Wall Street and in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).

Her story on Harvard Business School's attempts to improve its treatment of women led to a discussion of gender at business schools (as well as class and money issues.) After it was published, the dean of Harvard Business School, Nitin Nohria, apologized to all female alumnae for the negative experiences many of them had at Harvard and pledged to boost the number of case studies with female protagonists.

Kantor has explored how technology is changing the workplace.

In 2007, Kantor turned to covering politics for the Times, including the 2008 presidential campaign and Barack Obama's biography.

Starting in 2007, she wrote some of the earliest articles about Michelle Obama, the role of the Obama daughters in their father's career, the role of basketball in the president's life, his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his career as a constitutional law professor.

She broke the news of initial strain between Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

In autumn of 2009, she co-authored the story of Michelle Obama's slave roots and authored a cover story in the New York Times magazine about the first marriage, for which she interviewed the president and first lady in the Oval Office.

In the interview, she asked them "How can you have an equal marriage when one person is President?"

Kantor's book, The Obamas, published in 2012, chronicled the first couple's adjustment to the new world of the White House, revealing Michelle Obama's initial struggle and eventual turnaround in her role.

Shortly after the book's publication, Michelle Obama said in a television interview that she was tired of being portrayed as an "angry black woman."

However, she also stated that she had not read Kantor's book, and a diverse array of figures, including David Brooks, Jon Stewart, Farai Chideya, and Glenn Loury responded by calling Kantor's portrayal of Michelle Obama well-rounded and respectful.

White House officials initially distanced themselves from the book, but then reversed their tack after journalists called the book "deeply reported and nuanced" and "largely sympathetic."

In The New York Times, Connie Schultz praised The Obamas.

"A meticulous reporter, Ms. Kantor is attuned to the nuance of small gestures, the import of unspoken truths," Schultz wrote.

"She knows that every strong marriage, including the one now in the White House, has its complexities and its disappointments. Ms. Kantor also — and this is a key — has a high regard for women, which is why hers is the first book about the Obama presidency to give Michelle Obama her due. In the process we learn a great deal about the talented and introverted loner who married her, and how his wife has influenced him as a president."

Other reviewers called the book "insightful and evocative, rich with detail" and "an honest portrayal of people who are put under unprecedented scrutiny with unusual rapidity."

Ezra Klein, of The Washington Post, called The Obamas "among the very best books on this White House" and "a serious, thoughtful book on the modern presidency."

In August 2014, Kantor's article "Working Anything but 9 to 5," about a Starbucks barista and single mother struggling to keep up with a work schedule set by automated software, spurred the coffee chain to revise scheduling policies for 130,000 workers across the United States.

In the summer of 2015, Kantor and David Streitfeld published "Inside Amazon", a 6,000 word article about the company's methods of managing white-collar employees.

The article drew a response from Jeff Bezos, broke the newspaper's all-time record for reader comments, prompted veterans of the secretive company to come forward about their experiences online, and sparked a national debate about fairness and productivity in the technological workplace.

In 2016, Kantor co-authored "Refugees Welcome", spending 15 months chronicling how everyday Canadian citizens adopted tens of thousands of Syrian refugees.

The series won millions of readers and praise from across the globe, including from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who called it "remarkable & very human."

On October 5, 2017, Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the story of three decades of allegations of sexual harassment and abuse by the film producer Harvey Weinstein.

Kantor was a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for her reporting on sexual abuse by Harvey Weinstein.

Kantor is the author of the book The Obamas and She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement about the Harvey Weinstein investigation.

She is a contributor to CBS This Morning and has also appeared on Charlie Rose, The Daily Show and The Today Show.

Kantor was included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2018.

Born and raised in a Jewish family in New York City, Kantor moved to Holmdel Township, New Jersey, where she graduated from Holmdel High School.

Kantor's grandparents were Holocaust survivors.