Sarah Gardner

Reporter

SHORT BIO

Sarah Gardner is a former reporter with Marketplace's Sustainability Desk. Her past projects include "The Price of Profits," “We Used To Be China,” “Coal Play,” “Consumed,” “The Next American Dream,” “Jobs of the Future,” and “Climate Race,” among others. Sarah began her career at Marketplace as a freelancer and was hired as business editor and backup host to David Brancaccio in the mid-’90s.

Prior to her work at Marketplace, Sarah was a public radio freelancer in Los Angeles, a staff reporter for New Hampshire Public Radio, a commercial radio reporter in Massachusetts and an editor/reporter for a small-town newspaper in Minnesota. She is the recipient of several awards, including a Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Finance Journalism (1997), an Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award (1996 – 1997) and a George Foster Peabody Award, the oldest and most prestigious media award (2000).

Sarah attended Carleton College, where she received her bachelor’s degree in religion, and Columbia University, where she received her master’s degree in journalism. A native of Waukesha, Wisconsin, Sarah resides in Los Angeles.

Latest Stories (617)

A trio of proposed tariffs echo America's protectionist past

Nov 13, 2017
Proposed tariffs in three different industries — solar power, appliances and jets — echo the protectionist tariffs that helped deepen the Great Depression.
CESAR MANSO / Getty Images

Is retraining worth it? Laid off paper millworkers weigh the benefits

Sep 6, 2017
Government programs are meant to help those workers get new jobs. But reinvention is hard.
The remains of the NewPage paper mill in Kimberly, Wisconsin. The mill closed in 2008, leaving 600 people out of work. Kimberly-Clark Corp. built the mill in 1889.
Hayley Hershman

Why do U.S. retraining programs fall short?

Sep 1, 2017
The programs for workers displaced by globalization are a half-hearted attempt to help.
Ken Garduno, Illustrator

The American protectionism bill that made the Great Depression worse

Aug 24, 2017
The Smoot-Hawley story you never learned in high school history class.
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was a protectionist piece of legislation that raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods.
Ken Garduno, Illustrator
The protectionist tendencies in today's political climate actually have roots reaching back to Alexander Hamilton.
Ken Garduno, Illustrator

If protectionism were a song it'd sound like this

Aug 11, 2017
A searing campaign song from 1896 sounds surprisingly modern.
This is the cover for the sheet music of the original "McKinley Protection" campaign song.
Columbia University Libraries

When Public Works employed millions

Apr 3, 2017
Mass unemployment during the Great Depression led to hundreds of thousands of infrastructure projects all over America.
Men from all over the United States came to Northern California to find work at Shasta Dam. Construction lasted seven years, from 1938-1945.
courtesy U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

Mega-dams, like Hoover, probably wouldn't be built today

Mar 29, 2017
Dams are costly and have gone out of style. We also know more about their environmental impact.
Hoover Dam in 1936, the year it was completed. The dam was finished two years ahead of schedule and under budget, a feat unlikely to occur today.
Getty Images

Testing the idea of a basic income for all

Jan 4, 2017
Several countries are experimenting on small scales with basic-income programs.
Around 1,800 boxes of data from a 1970s basic income experiment can be found at Library and Archives Canada in Winnipeg.
Sarah Gardner/Marketplace

Can Finland sustain its current economic model?

Dec 28, 2016
Economic growth has been sluggish.
Tiina Vaahtio and Verna Vuoripuro both attend Aalto University's business school. Universities in Finland have already laid off staff, anticipating government funding cuts.
Sarah Gardner