About | Cast & Crew

Michelle Brier

Michelle Brier, a self-proclaimed "news junkie," joined Marketplace in 1996. A New York native, Michelle first dabbled in writing and reporting at the age of 13, when she produced and published a science-fiction "fanzine" out of her junior high school's guidance office without permission. She says the threadbare resources, long hours and multiple tasks as a writer, illustrator, editor and secretary prepared her for public radio.

Before coming to Marketplace, Michelle spent four years as a producer and reporter for the late Monitor Radio. Her assignments included stints in Washington, D.C. covering public policy, the United Nations in New York covering business and international affairs, and the 1996 presidential election, including the national nomination conventions in San Diego and Chicago. She ventured briefly to Bosnia in 1994 to cover the refugee crisis created by that country's civil war and describes the experience as "the best lesson in both reporting and in life." She admits she only returned home "because my entire family stopped talking to me while I was away."

Michelle also did time as a local radio news reporter in Boston and as a reporter, editor and managing editor at the TAB newspapers in Newton, Massachusetts.

A graduate of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, Michelle was the last student permitted to self-design a major in communications. The program was reportedly dismantled after Michelle's senior thesis, "The Subculture of Judy Blume," sparked campus-wide debates on the benefits of childhood bullying, training bras and turtle-eating. Still, she received a B.A. in Mass Communications in 1988.

When she's not taking the pulse of Wall Street, Michelle enjoys watching football, adding to her Barbie doll collection and riding historic carousels. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.