Bethany McLean
American journalist
Bethany Lee McLean (born December 12, 1970) is an American journalist and contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine. She is known for her writing on the Enron scandal and the 2008 financial crisis. Previous assignments include editor-at-large, columnist for Fortune, and a contributor to Slate.
Early life and education
McLean was born in Hibbing, Minnesota on December 12, 1970. McLean graduated from Hibbing High School in 1988. In 1992 she received a B.A. in English and mathematics from Williams College.
Career
McLean started her career as an investment banking analyst for Goldman Sachs and joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor in 2008. She began as a contributor to Slate's Moneybox column, in 2010 and "The Bulldog" column in Fortune.
She authored an article on Enron for the March 5, 2001, issue of Fortune entitled, "Is Enron Overpriced?" The article noted some irregularities in Enron's financial documents that were available to the public, suggesting the company's then-record high stock price was unjustified but she did not at that point suspect fraud at Enron. After Enron's rapid collapse later in 2001, McLean co-authored, with Peter Elkind, the book The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003) which detailed the corrupt business practices of Enron officials.
The public source identifies “Bethany McLean” as american journalist. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bethany, McLean and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4897767. VIAF identifies the subject as 188101103. The Library of Congress control number is n2003102564. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1970, 2008, 1988 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bethany McLean” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.