Leigh Gallagher, older sister of Drew Gallagher ’95, 1990 graduate of Haven, loves to write.
Gallagher has been a sought-after on-air presence on broadcast outlets including MSNBC’s Morning Joe, CNBC’s Squawk Box, CBS This Morning, Face the Nation, CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, and others.
She pursued a career in journalism because of The Panther Press and Mrs. Stanfield’s ninth-grade journalism class.
“You get to find things out and tell it to people,” Gallagher said. “I just thought, ‘I don’t ever need to look at anything else. This is what I want to do.’”
According to Emily Farrell, a retired English teacher at Haven, Gallagher was an excellent writer. She had opinions and was not afraid to express them in class.
“In that time, many girls thought that they should be silent, and Leigh was not like that,” Farrell said.
Gallagher went to Cornell University after high school. She did not major in journalism, but looked for a full-time journalism job after college. Finding a full-time job was difficult because she did not have connections.
“I just used the New York Times’ classified ads and looked and did a ton of interviews. My first job was at a trade magazine called Sporting Goods Business,” Gallagher said.
After working at the trade magazine for two and a half years, Gallagher went to Forbes Magazine, where she went on air on the Forbes show on Fox News. She also worked as a fact-checker.
“This is a great way to start at a publication because you learn how a story is reported. When you take someone else’s story, someone very senior, you really learn how they put it together,” Gallagher said.
After working at Forbes Magazine for six years, she worked as an editor at Smart Money Magazine. Three years later, she moved to Fortune Magazine, where she went on other shows.
“Other teachers and friends of mine would call me up and say, ‘Quick, turn on the TV. Leigh is on,” Farrell said.
At Fortune Magazine, Gallagher wrote two books called The Airbnb Story and The End of the Suburbs. She also became one of the co-chairs of the Fortune Most Powerful Women’s Summit.
“That was everything from building the community of people who we were trying to get to attend, bringing in speakers, and directing the programming,” Gallagher said.
In 2019, Google approached Gallagher about a job they were looking to fill in communications. She helped them build relationships with media in New York City and Washington for four years until shifting to a consulting company called Teneo.
“We advise CEOs. Usually, I’m working with the chief communications officer, but oftentimes it will be about the CEO’s media strategy, helping them solve a problem, or helping them navigate a complex situation,” Gallagher said.
As a consultant, Gallagher uses her experience in the Fortune Most Powerful Women’s Summit to help her clients navigate the summit and get speaking roles at the summit. For Gallagher, work should be enriching, transformative, and a point of passion.
“This was advice I got from my mother. She used to always say, ‘Do what you love.’ That was the most important thing, and that’s what I did,” Gallagher said.
