Ilana Kowarski

About

As a journalist, I am always on the lookout for interesting stories and extraordinary people. I wrote about a poet who chronicled the history of democratic revolutions, and I was on a film crew that produced a documentary about cloistered monks in Chicago. My unconventional story ideas distinguish me as a writer and help me avoid the pitfalls of pack journalism. I received honors in an ideas reporting seminar at the Columbia Journalism School, where I earned an M.S. in 2012, and my goal is to produce original, thought-provoking news content. As a senior mergers and acquisitions reporter at MLex, a regulatory news service that is a subsidiary of Lexis Nexis, I cover legal controversies surrounding corporate consolidations and focus specifically on US antimonopoly laws designed to prevent and unwind anticompetitive transactions.Here's a brief rundown of my background before joining MLex. I spent a little over six years as a graduate schools reporter at US News & World Report, where I specialized in consumer journalism, and my focus was on providing prospective graduate students with the information they need to inform their education decisions and career choices. Before that, I was a newspaper reporter in Central Florida for more than 2 1/2 years, writing for FLORIDA TODAY newspaper, and during that time, I covered multiple beats, including general assignment business, retail, real estate, education, and innovation. I also have experience as a State House reporter in Annapolis, Maryland. I was part of the reporting team at MarylandReporter.com that won the 2013 “Best of Baltimore” award given by Baltimore magazine, which named ours as the best political website in the region and praised us for covering state politics with “unusual breadth and depth.” Our State House reporting was also awarded with a first place, statewide prize from the Maryland Pro Society of Professional Journalists. I went to college at the University of Chicago, where I graduated as a Phi Beta Kappa and a Student Marshal, the highest undergraduate honor. During my college years, I was a regular contributor to the student newspaper, where I wrote articles on a variety of subjects, including arts reviews and hard news.