Financial Times has appointed its new editor, Roula Khalaf as Lionel Barber, the current editor and Britain’s most senior financial journalist is stepping down.

With its new editor onboard, Financial Times has got its first woman editor in its 131-year history. Khalaf has served as Deputy Editor, foreign editor and Middle East editor during her more than two decades at FT and in recent years has sought to increase diversity in the newsroom and attract more female readers, while also becoming the publication’s first Arab editor.

On her appointment, Khalaf shared in media, “It is a great honor to be appointed editor of the FT, the greatest news organization in the world. I look forward to building on Lionel Barber’s extraordinary achievements.”

Before joining the FT in 1995, Khalaf worked at Forbes in New York and earned a master’s at Columbia University and graduated from Syracuse University. She has worked for the FT since 1995, first as North Africa correspondent, then Middle East correspondent, Middle East Editor and as Foreign Editor. In 2016, she was promoted to be Deputy Editor of the Financial Times. In addition to her Deputy Editor responsibilities, she writes and comments regularly on world affairs, Middle East politics and business.

In 2009, Khalaf won “The Peace through Media Award” of the International Media Awards “in recognition of her high standards of reporting and the quality of her news analysis.

Interestingly, Khalaf was also quoted in Jordan Belfort’s The Wolf of Wall Street, “The press onslaught had started in 1991, when an insolent reporter from Forbes magazine, Roula Khalaf, coined me as a twisted version of Robin Hood, who robs from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers. She deserved an A for cleverness, of course.”

With Khalaf taking the role of editor at Financial Times, she will join Katharine Viner at the Guardian as one of the few women to edit major newspapers in Britain and one of few leading female editors in the world after Jill Abramson left the New York Times.

Image Credits: The telegraph