Sheelah Kolhatkar

Sheelah Kolhatkar is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes about business, politics, and technology. She’s also the author of the best-selling book Black Edge (Random House, 2017), about the largest insider trading investigation in history and the challenges of prosecuting the ultra-wealthy, which was named a Top Book of 2017 by The New York Times. She was recently named a 2025 New America Fellow. Kolhatkar has appeared as a commentator on business and economic issues on Amanpour & Co. on PBS and CNN International, CNBC, MSNBC, PBS, CBS, and NPR; contributed to New York City’s public radio station WNYC; and has consulted on scripted and unscripted film and streaming projects. Her work has also appeared in New York magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Time, and other publications. Before becoming a journalist, she spent several years as an analyst at two hedge funds in New York City. She holds an undergraduate degree from New York University and an MA from Stanford University.

Kolhatkar’s project, “Vulture Capitalist,” will be a deeply reported narrative illuminating the ways our country has been transformed over the last 40 years by the activities of hedge funds and other private investors. It will examine how activist investing, a speculative investment strategy, has changed the way that companies are run, sometimes leading them to prioritize short-term gains over other considerations, which can contribute, over time, to widening wealth inequality.