Getting to Know Leslie
Leslie's distinguished career in journalism spanned thirty-five years. A producer for CBS News “60 Minutes”, a correspondent for PBS “Frontline”, a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton, a writer and author, Leslie has won two Emmys, two George Polk Awards, two Columbia Dupont journalism awards, and the Robert F. Kennedy Award. She has covered the major issues of our time, from the financial meltdown to nuclear weapons, from radical jihad to the drug cartels. She covered the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Colombia, Cambodia and Central America.
Leslie and her husband Andrew bought their farm in Rappahannock County, Virginia in 1999. Rappahannock County hugs the Blue Ridge Mountains, has many more cows than people and has yet to install a stoplight. It is a place of unsurpassed beauty, where people care deeply about conservation and community. It is also a place where income disparity is acute, where the community services, as fine as they are, must be enhanced to serve all. It is a place where the loss of Medicaid would destroy families and gut the special needs programs of our schools. It is a place where stripping disability from Social Security would devastate the lives of older Virginians. It is a place where the proposed massive cuts in the Farm Bill would cripple farmers.
Leslie has done many years of community service on the boards of the Piedmont Environmental Council and the Krebser Fund in Rappahannock, both dedicated to conservation. She has been engaged in battles against unnecessary power lines, pipeline and uranium mining. She is equipped to stand up for the rights of Virginians in the pipeline battles that are raging in several counties. She can see the folly of repealing stream protection and allowing the poisoning of our waterways.
Leslie is a graduate of Yale University. She and Andrew (Washington Editor of Harper’s Magazine) celebrated their 40th anniversary this year and have three children and four grandchildren. Their daughter Olivia Wilde is starring in "The Avenger," about a woman who demands justice for domestic violence. Their daughter Chloe is a Harvard-trained attorney who has devoted her life to criminal justice. Their son Charlie is a writer.