Kathleen Hennessey serves as Editor and Senior Vice President for the Minnesota Star Tribune, joining the media platform after spending the three prior years at The New York Times as a Deputy Politics Editor.

Kathleen brings a breadth of reporting and editing chops to the Strib. She spent much of her career in Washington, where she covered politics, Congress and the Obama White House, initially for the Tribune newspapers and then for the Associated Press. Kathleen began her editing career in 2016 as AP’s White House Editor and was quickly elevated to Deputy Washington Chief, playing a key role in leading the global news service’s coverage of the first Trump administration.

But Hennessey is not a typical creature of Washington. She has reported from statehouses in Sacramento and Carson City, and written about brothels, casinos and the beauty pageants from Las Vegas. As an editor, she pushed for deeper coverage of voters and the political currents coursing far from the Beltway. The work eventually allowed her to move back to Minnesota, where, before joining the Times, she led a national team of AP political reporters who lived in the communities they covered.

She holds a master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism, and a Bachelor of Arts in History from Boston College, where she graduated cum laude in the University Honors Program.

Kathleen, her husband, Bill Carroll, and their three boys live in Minneapolis – much to the dismay of her extended family, whose roots run deep in St. Paul. Her grandfather, Thomas Byrne, served as the city’s mayor in the late 1960s. Kathleen grew up in Highland Park, graduated from Cretin-Derham Hall High School and spent her summers swimming in the St. Croix River.