Priyanka Shankar
Priyanka Shankar focuses on how corporate decisions and labour movements intersect, bringing the people behind global business stories to the centre of her coverage for Al Jazeera. She writes on business through the lens of workers, unions and management, showing how boardroom choices translate into wages, conditions and risks on the factory floor.
Labour, unions and corporate power
Shankar’s coverage of the planned strike by tens of thousands of Samsung workers in South Korea shows the way she treats labour as a core business story rather than a side issue. She unpacks why nearly 50,000 employees are prepared to walk out, explaining union demands, pay disputes and working conditions alongside the company’s public stance. The piece tracks the tactics and leverage on both sides, highlighting how organised labour tests the limits of a powerful multinational’s control over its workforce. Instead of focusing solely on share prices or executive commentary, she builds the narrative around the voices and interests of workers and their representatives, and sets those against management’s efforts to maintain productivity and profit.
Global industries and supply‑chain stakes
In writing about a Samsung strike through the business desk, Shankar frames what could seem like a local industrial dispute as a story with global economic consequences. She links workplace unrest to the importance of semiconductors and electronics in supply chains, showing how disruption at a single major employer can ripple through export figures, manufacturing schedules and worldwide technology markets. Her business coverage situates labour flashpoints within broader questions about competitiveness, inflation, demand for consumer electronics and the strategic weight of key industries. That approach gives communications and policy teams a clear sense of how a company‑level issue will be interpreted in terms of market impact and sector‑wide dynamics.
Explanatory business reporting with structural context
Shankar writes in an explanatory style that assumes a general audience rather than a specialist business readership. She breaks complex disputes into clear questions — who is involved, what they are asking for, how negotiations are unfolding and what is at stake for the wider economy. Her pieces trace the structural forces behind a headline event, such as the role of unions in a particular sector, the legacy of past labour disputes, or the pressures created by global demand for a company’s products. She tends to balance data and expert analysis with human examples from affected workers, using plain language to connect corporate strategy, labour relations and economic policy in one frame.
Themes that recur across her business beat
Across her business coverage, recurring threads include organised labour, workplace rights and the distribution of power and risk between employees and large companies. She is drawn to stories where internal company decisions collide with public interest — strike actions, contract negotiations, pay and benefits, or operational changes that could affect thousands of jobs. Rather than treating these as isolated incidents, she places them in the context of long‑running trends in globalisation, industrial policy and the bargaining strength of workers in strategic industries.
4 more business journalists.
Alex Bronzini-Vender
Alex Bronzini-Vender is a business reporter who focuses on how economic forces and corporate decisions shape specific communities and industries. He covers business for the Washington Monthly, writing reported pieces at the intersection of commerce and public life. His work reflects the magazine’s emphasis on linking markets and money to power, policy, and everyday experience. He treats business not as balance sheets and deals but as choices that affect local realities. In “Fear and Loathing in Palo Alto,” he uses a city tied to the tech sector to examine how a powerful industry influences a community. He grounds his business beat in on-the-ground consequences rather than treating corporate and financial developments in isolation.
Alex Smith
Alex Smith focuses on the business impact of enterprise technology, with a distinctive emphasis on AI literacy and skills rather than technical specifications. They write for Technology Record, covering how artificial intelligence and cloud platforms from major providers are turned into concrete programmes for organisations and governments. Their beat sits at the junction of business strategy, national digital policy and large-scale technology partnerships. They report on national AI literacy programmes and public–private partnerships, showing how policy choices, vendor capabilities and skills gaps intersect. On the business beat, they treat AI and cloud as tools for competitiveness, workforce readiness and participation in a data-driven economy. Their concise, announcement-led reporting highlights who is partnering with whom, what programme is being launched, which technologies underpin it and how it changes capability on the ground for executive readers.
Alison Durkee
Alison Durkee focuses on how law, regulation and politics create business risks for major companies and industries. She is a reporter at Forbes, where she writes news-driven explainers on complex legal and regulatory developments and their impact on corporate strategy, reputation and markets. Her coverage centers on companies under scrutiny, especially in technology and other high-growth sectors, and tracks trials, investigations and fast-changing policy fights. She breaks down lawsuits, inquiries and regulatory moves into clear parts, grounded in timelines, filings and official actions. She reports on generative artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies as tests of legal frameworks and corporate risk management, explaining how issues like intellectual property, safety compliance, consumer protection and governance can reshape product roadmaps, partnerships and investor expectations.
Alyson Shontell
Alyson Shontell covers business through the lens of leadership, using in-depth conversations with powerful executives and founders to show how their decisions shape companies, markets, and public life. She is editor in chief at Fortune, overseeing coverage across the masthead while continuing to write selected high-impact pieces. Her core work is long, reported interviews and profiles of CEOs of large companies, dominant tech firms, and fast-growing startups. She focuses on how leaders think, manage risk, make unconventional calls, and handle crises, culture, and the future of work. Her subjects include corporate chiefs, startup founders, and political figures treated as executives. She probes operating detail, governance, internal culture, and trade-offs around growth, disruption, and workplace models, using concrete examples and direct, accessible prose that foregrounds the subject’s voice while pressing for specifics.