Kathryn Schulz

Kathryn Schulz Speaker Biography

Kathryn Schulz is a journalist, author, and public speaker with a credible (if not necessarily enviable) claim to being the world’s leading wrongologist. As a public speaker, Kathryn has an uncanny knack for making her audience laugh while also making them think. Her message about the importance of embracing our innate human fallibility has inspired audiences of every kind, from CEOs to college students, doctors to educators, engineers to religious leaders.

She is the former editor of the online environmental magazine Grist, and a former reporter and editor for The Santiago Times, of Santiago, Chile, where she covered environmental, labour, and human rights issues.  She was a 2004 recipient of the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism, and has reported from throughout Central and South America, Japan, and, most recently, the Middle East.

Kathryn is the author of “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error” (Ecco Press, 2010), of which Dwight Garner wrote “Ms. Schulz’s book is a funny and philosophical meditation on why error is mostly a humane, courageous and extremely desirable human trait. She flies high in the intellectual skies, leaving beautiful sunlit contrails.” She also writes “The Wrong Stuff,” a Slate series featuring interviews with high-profile people about how they think and feel about being wrong.

Schulz currently works as a book critic for New York Magazine, a position that followed the publication of her pieces within the Rolling Stones, Boston Globe and TIME Magazine circulations. Her unbending support for the value of failure led her to her authorship of 'Being Wrong' in 2010, later recognized in 2012 by way of her receipt of the National Book Critic Circle's Nona Balakian Prize in Excellence in Reviewing. 

Schulz's presentations also provide a window to her worldly reporting experiences as she delved into the thick of South American and Middle Eastern regions. Her brave accomplishments brought about her 2004 acceptance of the Pew Fellowship's International Journalism award.