Originally broadcast at 1:00 p.m. ET Thursday, July 15, 2021.

Gretchen Morgenson, Senior Financial Reporter, Investigations Unit NBC News, Pulitzer Prize Winner, “The Hidden Force Driving the Wealth Gap in America”

Gretchen will highlight how the gulf between rich and poor in America has widened during COVID, our government's financial response, and that of the American capitalism. She will also describe how our current debt-infused financial system rewards financiers while siphoning off wealth from lower- and middle-class workers.

Ms. Morgenson began her career in 1976 upon graduation from Saint Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. She joined Vogue Magazine as an editorial assistant and began writing the personal finance column for the magazine several years later.

In 1981 she became a stockbroker at Dean Witter, a job she held for three years. Ms. Morgenson joined Money Magazine as a staff writer in 1984 and moved to Forbes in 1986. She was named assistant managing editor at the magazine in September 1997.

Ms. Morgenson is co-author, with Joshua Rosner, of “Reckless Endangerment,” a New York Times bestseller about the origins of the 2008 financial crisis published in May 2011 by Times Books.

Ms. Morgenson has won two Gerald Loeb Awards, one in 2009 for her coverage of Wall Street and another in 2002 for excellence in financial commentary. Ms. Morgenson has also served on two Pulitzer Prize juries, evaluating investigative reporting entries in 2009 and 2010.

Ms. Morgenson and her husband live in New York City and have a son.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.