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Portrait of Stacy Cowley

Stacy Cowley

I write frequently about student debt, the banking industry and a wide variety of financial issues affecting people and their households. I’m interested in data security and privacy and occasionally cover financial industry cybersecurity concerns. I also cover small business issues.

I’m often drawn toward stories about how market forces or government policies affect people and their businesses. At the peak of the pandemic, for example, I extensively covered the Paycheck Protection Program and the effects of rapidly blasting hundreds of billions of dollars into the small business landscape.

I write about the actions of government agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Education Department and the Small Business Administration. My work involves talking to lawyers, regulators, bankers and the people whom their work affects to deliver stories that capture the complexities and nuances of consumer protection and debt collection laws.

I started my journalism career in the late ’90s as a technology reporter. I worked at a variety of tech trade publications for a decade before shifting to broader business coverage. I fell in love with writing about entrepreneurs and their creations during a stint at Fortune Small Business magazine. I later moved to CNN Business as an editor and reporter focused on technology, small business and the economy at large.

I’m not a programmer (I did very poorly in my one college computer science class), but I’ve spent years working closely with coders on newsroom technology projects, and I am fairly fluent in enterprise-technology architecture and other geekery. That led directly to my job at The Times: I joined in 2013 as part of the team that built NYT Now, an experimental mobile news app.

I later moved to the Business section, where I’m part of the news team that covers Wall Street and finance. I serve as the elected secretary of the Times Guild, our newsroom union. I was born and raised in Columbia, Md., and now live in Brooklyn with my husband and several former street cats.

As a Times journalist, I share the values and adhere to the standards of integrity outlined in The Times’s Ethical Journalism handbook. I strive to be accurate, meticulous, fair and empathetic in my work. I frequently speak with people about emotionally fraught subjects — like debt or fraud — and I deeply appreciate sources’ willingness to share their personal stories. I work to honor that openness by trying to reflect in my articles the nuances of often complex situations. I always identify myself as a reporter when I’m speaking with people for my news coverage. I do not directly own individual stocks or have any financial involvement with any companies other than The New York Times Company. My retirement savings are in broad market funds.

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