Leslie Picker

Senior Finance & Banking Reporter at CNBC

Speaker

Leslie Picker is a senior finance and banking reporter for CNBC, based at the network’s Global Headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Picker covers banking, financial institutions, hedge funds, private equity and asset management, and her reporting appears on CNBC’s Business Day programming and the network’s digital platforms. Previously, Picker was a reporter for CNBC starting in February 2017.

Picker helped launch CNBC’s Delivering Alpha Newsletter in 2021, where she interviews prominent investors and covers key themes in finance on a bi-monthly basis. Her investigation into Puerto Rico’s debt crisis won a Society for Advanced Business Editing and Writing (SABEW) award and was a finalist for a Gerald Loeb Award in 2018.

Prior to CNBC, Picker was a reporter at The New York Times where she covered deals. Her beat encompassed mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, venture capital, private equity, restructuring and shareholder activism. Prior to The New York Times, Picker was a reporter at Bloomberg News where she reported on initial public offerings. There, she also contributed to Bloomberg Businessweek, Bloomberg Television and Bloomberg Radio. Prior to becoming a reporter, Picker was a segment producer for Bloomberg Television.

Picker graduated magna cum laude from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science. She also earned a master’s in journalism from Columbia University, graduating with honors, and an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business, with a concentration in finance.