Heidi Schlumpf (Alicia Motz Wiechert)
The National Catholic Reporter Publishing Co. has named NCR executive editor Heidi Schlumpf a vice president of the company.
Schlumpf, who became executive editor in May 2020, will continue in that role as well.
"This promotion recognizes the extraordinary leadership Heidi has provided during the first year of her tenure as executive editor," said NCR CEO and publisher Bill Mitchell. "She has set just the right tone for our pursuit of the most important stories facing the church and its people, and she has connected the organization with readers in ways that have resulted in strong growth in our reputation as well as our traffic."
The executive committee of NCR's board of directors approved Mitchell's proposal to promote Schlumpf earlier this month, with board chair Jim Purcell praising her "wonderful work."
Mitchell, who also serves as NCR's president, said the new title matches the company-wide role Schlumpf plays in helping make sure that NCR lives up to its mission to "connect Catholics to church, faith and the common good with independent news, analysis and spiritual reflection."
In addition to her staff leadership, he cited the award-winning Connections column she writes every other week for NCR's print edition (and which also appears online) and her representation of NCR on such platforms as National Public Radio and The New York Times.
Schlumpf joined NCR as its national correspondent in 2017 before succeeding interim executive editor Tom Roberts in that job last year.
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Before joining NCR, she served as managing editor of U.S. Catholic magazine and as a reporter at Chicago's archdiocesan newspaper and secular newspapers in California and Wisconsin. Her work has been published by CNN Opinion, Sojourners and Huffington Post. She taught journalism as an associate professor of communication at Aurora University in Illinois.
A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, she also earned a master's of theological studies from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary at Northwestern University, where she studied with feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether.
She is the author/editor of three books, including Elizabeth A. Johnson: Questing for God (Liturgical Press, 2016), The Notre Dame Book of Prayer (Ave Maria, 2010) and While We Wait: Spiritual and Practical Advice for Those Trying to Adopt (ACTA, 2009).
Schlumpf is based in Chicago, where she lives with her husband, Edmund, and their two children, and where she is a member of St. Gertrude Parish.