Now is the best of times.

No, really.

Speaker: Marshall Ingwerson

Marshall Ingwerson is a journalist and former Editor of The Christian Science Monitor.

As a reporter at the Monitor, he has been based in Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Washington DC – covering the George H.W. Bush and Clinton White Houses – and then Moscow during the post-Soviet Yeltsin years. His coverage of the oil boom around the Caspian Sea won an Overseas Press Club citation in 1997.

As Managing Editor of the Monitor, he managed the transition of the Monitor from a daily print newspaper to a Web-first news operation with a weekly print edition. As Editor, he led the development and launch of the Monitor as a daily digital subscription product in 2017.

In thinking broadly about the news every day, he observed that the built-in negativity of how news is defined – essentially, things that go wrong and how they could get worse – creates an unbalanced and inaccurate view of the world. Progress is spectacularly undercovered. And the result is cynicism, declining social trust, and greater divisiveness. He committed the Monitor more strongly and explicitly to reporting progress when it appeared and to helping people understand each other across divides.

He left the Monitor in 2017 to become Chief Executive of Principia, which operates a liberal arts college – Principia College – and a pre-K-12 independent boarding school – Principia School – both in the St. Louis area. At Principia, he led significant policy changes across both campuses and a new strategic plan that opened the door to reversing nearly four decades of enrollment decline.

He is currently in Southern California developing a new idea: The What Works Initiative.