Jessica Lessin

Jessica E. Lessin is an American journalist who serves as editor-in-chief of the technology website The Information, which she founded in December 2013.^[2][3][4] Lessin had previously spent eight years at The Wall Street Journal covering the technology and media industries.^[5][6][7]

Jessica Lessin
Born	Jessica Elizabeth Vascellaro (1983-05-11) May 11, 1983 (age 42)
Occupation	Journalist, businesswoman
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Harvard College (BA)
Years active	2005 - current
Spouse	Samuel Lessin[1]
Children	3
Website
www.theinformation.com

Early life and education

Born Jessica Elizabeth Vascellaro, her father, Jerome Vascellaro, is the COO of private equity firm TPG Capital and a trustee of Brown University.^[8][9] She attended New Canaan Country School in Connecticut before enrolling at Harvard University in 2001.^[10] She graduated from Harvard College in 2005, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in history. While at Harvard, she wrote for The Harvard Crimson and served as an executive editor.^[11][12]

Career

After graduating from Harvard, she completed an internship at the Wall Street Journal and later became a full-time staff member.^[10] During her tenure at the publication, Lessin wrote more than a thousand articles and news stories while covering Apple,^[13] Google,^[14] Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter and other global technology companies.^[12] She was part of the team that was a 2012 Pulitzer Finalist for a series on digital privacy.^[15] The team won a public service award from the Society of Professional Journalists for the same series. She has appeared on CNBC, NPR, CNN, Charlie Rose, and is a regular speaker at international conferences.^[16][17]

Lessin left the Wall Street Journal in 2013 to establish The Information, an online tech publication based in San Francisco.^[18] Lessin was listed as an Influential Woman in Technology by Business Insider in 2014.^[19]

By 2017, The Information expanded the markets it covered, opened offices in Hong Kong and New York City, and had grown to 22 staff members.^[12] That same year, Lessin announced that The Information was launching a business accelerator aimed at building subscription-based news organizations.^[20]

In June 2023, Jessica Lessin together with Sam Lessin, Dave Morin and Brit Morin started a podcast called "More or Less" where they discuss the latest news from Silicon Valley.

Personal life

In 2012, Lessin married Samuel Lessin, a former Facebook VP and current startup founder and investor.^[21][22] Their first child was born in early 2017. Both Lessin and her husband are close friends with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.^[23]