Gillian Tett

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Gillian Romaine Tett OBE (born 10 July 1967) is a British journalist and author. She sits on the editorial board of the Financial Times and has been Provost of King’s College, Cambridge since October 2023.

Tett grew up in London and attended the North London Collegiate School. She studied at Clare College, Cambridge, earning a BA in Archaeology and Anthropology in 1989 and a PhD in social anthropology in 1996, based on fieldwork in Tajikistan. Frustrated by what she saw as the self‑critical trap of academic anthropology, she moved into journalism and joined the Financial Times in 1993.

Her FT career included roles such as Tokyo bureau chief, deputy head of the Lex column, and US managing editor. She co-founded Moral Money, the newspaper’s sustainability newsletter. Tett’s reporting on the 2008 financial crisis helped popularize the idea that complex financial instruments and misaligned incentives were fueling economic risk, including questions about securitization and the reliability of credit rating agencies.

Her 2009 book Fool’s Gold examined the JP Morgan saga and its link to the crisis. She contributed to the 2010 documentary Inside Job and published Anthro-Vision in 2021, which looks at organizations, individuals, and markets through an anthropological lens. Tett lives in London with her two children.

She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to economic journalism. She also serves as Chair of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia University.