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Ripley is an investigative journalist who writes about human behavior and public policy. She is a contributing writer at Time Magazine, where she has written feature stories on education, disasters and politics for the past 10 years. Her work has also appeared in The Atlantic, Slate, The Times of London, The Daily Beast, Congressional Quarterly and The Washington Monthly.

As an Emerson Fellow at New America, Ripley is working on a book about the best public school systems in the world--and how they got that way. The Smart Kids Club will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2012. Her 2008 book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why, was published in 15 countries. In 2005, Ms. Ripley’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina helped Time win two National Magazine Awards. She graduated from Cornell University