Bethany McLean '92: Williams Bicentennial Medalist 2011

An English and mathematics double major from the Class of 1992, Bethany McLean gained international prominence as the first journalist to question the financial dealings of Enron with her 2001 Fortune magazine article "Is Enron overpriced?" After the company's collapse, she collaborated with Peter Elkind to write The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, which was later made into an Academy Award-nominated documentary. She is also co-author, with Joe Nocera, of All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis, which was celebrated for both its rigorous bird's eye view of the crisis and its gripping style. Formerly an editor-at-large and columnist for Fortune, McLean moved to Vanity Fair in 2008, where she serves as contributing editor. At Vanity Fair and in her regular columns for Slate, she continues to examine financial phenomena in reader-friendly articles. McLean returned to Williams to speak at the fall Convocation in 2002 and at the opening of the inaugural Mathematics/Statistics/Computer Science Mini-Conference in 2008.

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