Co-Founder & Executive Editor, POLITICO

Jim VandeHei is co-founder and executive editor of POLITICO, the highly influential political web site and newspaper that Washingtonian magazine hailed as a “media phenomenon.” VandeHei, along with co-founder John Harris, left the Washington Post in 2006 to create the all-politics-all-the-time site, and the company has been a smashing success ever since. More than three million unique readers visit the site each month, and more than 30,000 of the nation’s political leaders read its Washington-based newspaper. Drawing on 15 years of experience in Washington journalism, VandeHei directs POLITICO’s editorial content and oversees its business strategy – amalgamating old media values of fairness and accuracy with the speed and immediacy of new technologies. Before founding POLITICO, VandeHei spent more than a decade covering the power politics of Washington. He cut his teeth at Roll Call, where he routinely broke exclusive national stories. He moved to the Wall Street Journal in the late 1990s to cover Congress and the early years of the Bush presidency, and then the Washington Post lured him away in 2002 to cover all things political. He was the lead writer on the big Congressional debates, the 2004 presidential election, and the second term of the Bush presidency. His expertise in a variety of areas – Congress, the White House, campaigns, lobbying, policy, and media – allows VandeHei to tailor his speeches to the specific needs and interests of his audience.