Today is the IRS tax filing deadline, which is a bummer for some people. But it’s a very exciting day here at Xconomy.
It’s my pleasure to announce that today is the first full day on the job for Ben Fidler, our new East Coast Biotech Editor. Ben joins us after spending the last nine years as a business reporter with The Deal in New York. He’s written all kinds of breaking news and feature stories in his time there, and spent the last two years learning the scientific, medical, and business nuances of the healthcare beat. Like all really good business reporters, he knows his way around public records and also has a deep curiosity and instinct for the human side of a story.
Ben has covered a wide variety of stories in his career, including the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler, the fall of a professional hockey franchise, and more recently, some notable deals in healthcare—like AstraZeneca’s recent partnership with Cambridge, MA-based Moderna Therapeutics, and Genentech’s alliance with Cambridge, MA-based Constellation Pharmaceuticals. The learning curve is steeper in biotech than almost any other business reporting beat, but Ben has already shown he can climb. He’s eager to climb some more, and share what he learns on this adventure with you, the readers of Xconomy.
Ben will be based in New York, and as his title suggests, he will be focused on life sciences innovation in Xconomy’s two East Coast geographies—Boston and New York. For my part, I’ll continue to roam around the Xconomy map in search of stories, but I’ll be putting most of my reporting focus on the West Coast.
Ben is a native of Armonk in Westchester County, New York. He got his bachelor’s degree in English at Binghamton University (Go Bearcats!). Even though he’s at home in the big, big city, he had the good sense to take a hiking trip out West at Yosemite National Park before starting this new job. As a native New Yorker, he loves the Yankees, Knicks, and Giants (I’ll forgive him).
Please join me in welcoming Ben to the Xconomy team! You can send him a note at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @benthefidler. Welcome, Ben!
