About Us

Hilarey Gould is the editorial director of The Balance. During her 10+ years in the digital media space, she's developed a passion for economics, saving, investing, credit card perks, mortgage rates, and more. Hilarey began her career at TripAdvisor, and has since held full-time and freelance roles at a variety of media companies including realtor.com, Bankrate, and SmartAsset. Hilarey has a master's in journalism from the University of Missouri, and a bachelor's in journalism and professional writing from The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). She also works as an adjunct professor at TCNJ, teaching social media strategies to journalism students.

Yasmin Ghahremani is an Associate Editorial Director at The Balance, where she oversees educational content about consumer financial products, ranging from credit cards to life insurance. She joined the team in April 2019, bringing seven years of experience educating consumers about personal finance. She was previously a managing editor at CreditCards.com and Wise Bread, and a contract editor at LendingTree.

Yasmin has also had an extensive international career covering business, technology, and the environment for broadcast and print outlets, including CNN, CNBC, and Asiaweek magazine. She has a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia University.

Mrinalini is the senior investing editor at The Balance, with 10+ years of financial journalism experience across two continents and different media. She is passionate about creating comprehensible and usable financial content. She has previously worked with organizations such as Financial Times, Investopedia, Forbes and CNBC TV18. Mrinalini holds a master’s in business and economic reporting from New York University and a bachelor’s with honors in economics from the University of Delhi, India.

Lars Peterson joined The Balance in 2019. Lars's primary areas of focus are credit cards, banking, mortgages, and other financial products and services, with the goal of helping consumers make the most of these offerings, while avoiding pitfalls or catches. With more than 10 years experience as a writer and editor in personal finance and small business, Lars has written and edited for Wise Bread, US News, and Amex OPENForum, among others. His 20+ years as an editor and writer have included roles in book publishing, marketing, technical writing, and travel.

Lars earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees in English, both from California State University, Long Beach.

J.R. Duren is a terms editor at The Balance. For more than 10 years, he has worked in print and digital media, serving in roles as a marketing writer, reporter, and freelance editor. J.R. has held full-time and freelance roles as an editor at LendingTree and HighYa.com, and his writing and reporting has been featured on Glassdoor.com, Homes.com, and H&R Block.

Taylor Tompkins has worked for more than a decade as a journalist covering business, finance, and the economy. She has logged thousands of hours interviewing experts, analyzing data, and writing articles to help readers understand economic forces. She joined The Balance in 2022 as its Economics Editor. Her work has appeared online and in print at outlets such as American City Business Journals, Yahoo Finance, CreditCards.com, and the San Antonio Express-News. She has a B.S. in Journalism from Texas State University.

Kara Greenberg is the newsletter editor for The Balance. She joined the team in 2021 as a finance editor and now owns the production and strategy of The Balance's weekday and weekend newsletters. Kara has also written and edited for Investopedia, and she was previously a researcher and editor at The Wire. Earlier in her career, she worked in financial compliance and due diligence at Loomis, Sayles & Company and The Bank of New York Mellon.

Sienna is a self-proclaimed credit card nerd who has been creating personal finance content for more than seven years. She joined The Balance as a staff writer in May 2019, and is now managing special projects to further engage readers in important topics. Sienna previously worked for CreditCards.com and her work has been cited by major news outlets and government agencies, including the CFPB and NBCNews.com. She's committed to helping readers make informed decisions about their credit and brewing the perfect cup of french-pressed coffee.

Sienna earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, and completed a media studies program with The Fund For American Studies at George Mason University in Washington, D.C.

Jess Feldman is an associate editor for The Balance. She has been writing and editing for over five years, covering a variety of subjects across the digital media landscape. Since joining the financial space, she has developed an interest in budgeting and investing, and has also found the joys of embracing a financially smart lifestyle.

Jess has a degree journalism from the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism, one of the top-10 journalism schools in the country.

Hiranmayi Srinivasan is a writer and editor who specializes in explaining the key concepts of personal finance. As an associate editor for The Balance, she writes, edits, and fact checks articles every day, ensuring readers get the clearest, most accurate answers to their questions about money. She joined Dotdash Meredith in March 2021 as a staff writer for the centralized finance desk, and wrote daily personal finance articles for publications such as Real Simple, Better Homes & Gardens, Parents, and Health.

Diccon Hyatt is a staff reporter for The Balance. He has written hundreds of articles about how public policy and the economy intersect with personal finance, tracking all the latest dynamics affecting your money. Before joining The Balance, he covered business and community news for 17 years, including Princeton, New Jersey's high-tech Route 1 Corridor.

Meredith Mangan is a senior editor for The Balance, focusing on insurance product reviews. She brings to the job 15 years of experience in finance, media, and financial markets. Meredith spent five years as the managing editor for Money Crashers; prior to that, she was a licensed insurance agent and financial advisor.

Meredith enjoys unravelling complex topics and conveying them in meaningful ways for readers. She holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry from New College of Florida.

Michael is the Senior Investing and Trading Platforms Editor at The Balance, where he is in charge of covering and building the company’s reviews of online brokers, robo advisors, cryptocurrency wallets, and forex exchanges. He has 20 years’ mutual fund, macro market research, institutional trading desk, and trading education experience. Michael is also a chartered member and Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the industry-leading Chartered Market Technicians (CMT) Association.

Marisa is the Content Integrity and Compliance Manager at The Balance. In addition to making sure all The Balance documents are in compliance, another key function of Marisa’s role is running all articles through a routine and rigorous fact-checking process, so we can feel confident we’re publishing the most accurate content.

Marisa kickstarted her compliance career at CreditCards.com after moving over from the oil and gas contract management industry. While at CreditCards.com, she used her expertise to bring its network of over 100 financial bloggers into compliance by keeping a pulse on the quickly changing industry regulations, attending industry-specific training programs and unifying each blogger's editorial goals with compliance requirements. She also helped oversee the Chase, Wells Fargo, and internal affiliate programs monitoring their network of hundreds of publishers.

Brendan has been writing and editing content for nearly a decade, with a recent focus on finance, credit cards, and banking. As an associate editor for The Balance, he edits and fact-checks reviews of financial products and services.

Hannah leads a team of researchers who provide data-driven recommendations on financial services, and oversees product research and consumer research on investing and trading, cryptocurrency, and insurance.

Prior to joining the The Balance team, Hannah served as a lead researcher for Fortune 500 companies and multinational biotech companies including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Takeda, where she studied user behaviors using eye-tracking, spatial tracking, and force sensors. Her experience leading rigorous studies for FDA reviews shaped her standard of research integrity which guides her work at The Balance.

In her spare time, she enjoys playing the keyboard and reading nonfiction.

Christine DiGangi has dedicated the majority of her career to financial education, writing extensively about the consumer credit system. Before leading The Balance's brand and business strategy as General Manager, she oversaw content strategy and operations for three years as Editorial Director. Previously, Christine served as the managing editor of mortgage content at LendingTree, an editor and writer for Credit.com, communications coordinator for the Society of Professional Journalists, and a copy editor for The New York Times. She has more than a decade of experience in service journalism, as a writer , editor, and vocal advocate for ethics and accuracy in publishing.

As Chief Revenue Officer for The Balance, Katherine oversees the sales, marketing and client services teams responsible for delivering best in class media partnerships for our clients spanning all areas of the Financial Services Industry. Prior to Dotdash Meredith, Katherine held leadership roles in financial media sales as SVP Sales at Seeking Alpha, Executive Director at The Wall Street Digital, and Sales Director at MarketWatch. Katherine began her 20 year digital media career in Boston, in sales at Yahoo!, and Media Planning at Digitas. Katherine sits on the Executive Board of Directors for the Financial Communications Society. Katherine holds a B.A. in History & Psychology from Boston College. She resides in White Plains, NY with her husband and three children.

As SVP, Client Services for The Balance, Megan oversees the Sales Planning, Account Management and Finance Direct Response teams to develop strategic solutions for our global client base and execute successful partnerships. Megan originally joined Investopedia in 2015 to lead the Client Services & Marketing teams before Investopedia became part of Dotdash Meredith in 2018 and her responsibilities expanded to cover all financial services industry clients.

Prior to that, she served as the Director of Client Services at SET Media, a video ad technology company. She started her career in media planning at Universal McCann in San Francisco working with brands such as Microsoft and Sony.

As VP of Marketing, Michael oversees all aspects of ad sales marketing in the B2B space for Dotdash Meredith's finance group, which serves the needs of endemic financial brands across Investopedia, The Balance, and the entire suite of Dotdash Meredith sites. Prior to this, Michael was the VP, Product Sales & Strategy at Seeking Alpha, overseeing the custom solutions team. He started his career at Lowe & Partner/SMS developing and producing digital projects for Smirnoff and Mercedes. Michael made the move to the financial world in 2006 when he joined Bloomberg, where he spent more than seven years directing digital sales, first on the West Coast and then in the Northeast. Michael holds a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies from Fordham University.

Alexandra is Director, Brand Marketing & Communications for The Balance. She oversees strategy and production of Investopedia and The Balance's on-air talent, public appearances, newsletters and data-journalism special reports.