Bio

Curiosity, journalism skills and luck have allowed Margaret to explore eclectic topics in her writing, from the nutritional habits of female Olympians to the lawsuits intended to stop the building of Rio de Janeiro’s Guggenheim Rio museum.

For more than 19 years she has written for an odd, yet interesting, cross-section of publications, including: Chicago magazine, LifetimeTV.com, Ladies’ Home Journal, Wine Enthusiast, Crain’s Chicago Business, Time Out Chicago, the Chicago Tribune, Marketing News, Pastry Art and Design, Executive Travel, University Business, The Tennessean, ForbesTraveler.com, Business2.0.com, Working Mother, Mademoiselle, Teen, Sky and many others. She was a contributor to The Business Week Guide to The Best Business Schools (7th Ed.) and Weight Watchers Magazine’s Annual Recipes for Success 2000. She writes, edits and consults for several custom publishing companies.

Before freelancing, she worked for the Rochester Business Journal, Prepared Foods, and as a researcher for the Chicago bureau of Forbes. She was Executive Editor at Mobil Travel Guide.

For more than a decade, she was a contributing editor for Chain Leader magazine. Until it closed in 2010, she wrote the Storyboard coverage of breaking advertising campaigns, as well as business features on restaurant companies.

Margaret has a B.A. in fine arts from Vanderbilt University and an M.S.J. from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. In her free time, she takes courses at the Kellogg School of Management’s Center for Nonprofit Management, rescues wayward dogs, digs in her garden, makes hand-blocked hats and takes a lot of mental notes.

She is a member and past board member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and a two-time finalist for the Chicago Headline Club’s Peter Lisagor Award. Her article on at-home pet first aid for Woman’s Day magazine won the Dog Writers Association of America general interest magazine Maxwell award in 2002. Margaret was chair of the 2001 Writers & Editors One-on-One Conference. She is a past member of the board of directors of Friends of the Forest Preserves and a past trustee of the Fountain Valley School of Colorado. She is a member of the board of the Center for Refugees & Immigrants of Tennessee and Tennessee CASA.

She is regularly interviewed for TV, radio and print publications, including WGN Midday News, National Geographic Traveler and others.