Leslie Morgan Steiner

Leslie Morgan Steiner (born July 20, 1965 in Washington, D. C.) is an American author, professional blogger and businesswoman. Her birth name was Leslie Anne Morgan.

Career

A 1987 graduate of Harvard College with a B.A. in English, Steiner's first published work was an autobiographical account of her teenage struggle with anorexia, published in "Seventeen" in September 1986. The article, "Starving for Perfection", was written under the pseudonym Isabel Johnson and received over 4,000 reader letters, at the time a record for "Seventeen", and appeared in the anthology "The College Reader" (Harper Collins, 1993).

Steiner went on to work in the Articles Department for "Seventeen" from 1987-1988. She was a freelance magazine writer and consultant from 1988-1990. She earned an MBA degree in Marketing from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992.

Her corporate marketing career included stints at the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago and Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, New Jersey. At Johnson & Johnson she launched the low-calorie sweetener ingredient sucralose, also known as Splenda Brand Sweetener, internationally from 1994-2000. She oversaw the public relations program for the sweetener's United States Food and Drug Administration approval on April 1, 1999.

In early 2001 Steiner returned to her hometown of Washington, D.C. to become general manager of "The Washington Post Magazine". While working for "The Washington Post", Steiner became interested in the struggles of and tensions between American working and stay-at-home mothers. Her anthology, "Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face off on their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families" was published in 1986 by Random House and the essays by a range of at-home and working mothers such as Jane Smiley, Susan Cheever, Carolyn Hax and Jane Juska generated extensive media interest and controversy among conflicted American mothers, including mommy bloggers [http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/laborprof_blog/2006/04/the_nonexistent.html] , daddy bloggers [http://dadtalk.typepad.com/dadtalk/2006/03/columnist_takes.html] and publications such as The Atlantic Monthly [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200605/mommy-wars] , The Los Angeles Times [http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/31/opinion/oe-brooks31] and elsewhere [http://www.businessweek.com/careers/workingparents/blog/archives/2006/03/mommy_wars_vs_d.html] . Steiner continues to interpret the mommy wars, most recently the controversy [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/26524974#26524974] created by the nomination of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as the Republican Party's vice presidential candidate.

From 2006 to 2008, Steiner wrote "On Balance", an online column exploring work/family conflicts for washingtonpost.com, the internet site for her employer. "On Balance", one of washingtonpost.com's first forays into the blogosphere, quickly became popular among a diverse audience of men and women with and without children. Over the course of two years, Steiner's column became one of the most popular "mommy blogs" on the web. Steiner wrote over 500 columns and the site accumulated over 100,000 comments from online posters. The readership weighed in with up to 700 comments per day. Over the course of 27 months, 112,898 total comments were submitted by 11,735 different posting names and 16,632 anonymous posters. Over 500 especially dedicated readers posted 50 or more comments.

Steiner currently writes a weekly column, "Two Cents on Working Motherhood", for "Mommy Track'd: The Working Mothers Guide to Managed Chaos". She is a contributor to "On Being Fearless" by Arianna Huffington and "The Huffington Post". She is working on a memoir about surviving domestic violence.

Steiner is married to Perry Winter Steiner, a fellow Wharton business school graduate who works in private equity for Washington, DC - based Arlington Capital. The couple has three children and live in the District of Columbia.

References and external links

* [http://www.lesliemorgansteiner.com Official website ]
* [http://www.wamu.org/programs/dr/06/03/09.php#10196 The Diane Rehm Show March 2006 ]
* [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11762904/ The Today Show March 2006 ]
* [http://blog.washingtonpost.com/onbalance/ On Balance archived columns ]
* [http://www.mommytrackd.com/features/lesliemorgansteiner Mommy Track'D weekly column ]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/fashion/sundaystyles/29LOVE.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=anne+marie+feld&st=nyt&oref=slogin New York Times Mommy Wars excerpt in Modern Love ]
* [http://living.health.com/2008/03/20/busting-the-work-life-myth/ CNN Leslie Morgan Steiner Busts the Work/Life Myth ]
* [http://www.newsweek.com/id/46852Newsweek "Smart Moms, Hard Choices"]
* [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_11/b3975114.htm BusinessWeek]
* [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslie-morgan-steiner Huffington Post columnist Leslie Morgan Steiner]