Nina Easton is FORTUNE's Washington columnist and senior editor, covering politics and economics in the nation's capital for a readership of more than five million. Her column appears regularly in the magazine, and on-line at Fortune.com. She also serves as co-chair of the annual FORTUNE Most Powerful Women Summit.

Easton is a regular panelist on "Fox News Sunday" and "Special Report" with Bret Baier, and has recently appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press” and PBS’ “The Charlie Rose Show.”  During 2008, she was a lead commentator on the 2008 Fox News Election Desk, where she provided primetime commentary each primary election night as well as during the Democratic and Republican political conventions. She has also co-hosted CBS' "Face the Nation," and appeared on ABC's "This Week," PBS' "Washington Week in Review" and National Public Radio, among others.

During the 2004 presidential election, she was a political analyst on CNN's "NewsNight with Aaron Brown." That year, she also co-authored the book John F. Kerry: A Complete Biography and coordinated much of the Boston Globe's political coverage as deputy chief of that newspaper's Washington bureau, a position she held from 2003 until 2006.

Easton is author of the acclaimed political history Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Ascendancy (Simon & Schuster, 2002), which was praised by the Washington Post for telling the story of post-Reagan conservatism "more inventively, exhaustively and entertainingly than anyone else." Her insights into the rise of the modern political right prompted the Wall Street Journal to dub her "the Dian Fossey of conservatism.” In 1982, she co-authored the book Reagan's Ruling Class: Portraits of the President's Top 100 Officials, a Washington Post best-seller that profiled the capital's new leaders.

From 1988 until 1998, Easton was a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and its Sunday Magazine. Her articles won numerous major awards, including the National Headliners Award for best magazine writing and the Sunday Magazine Editors Award for investigative reporting. Before joining the Los Angeles Times, she covered business for The American Banker, BusinessWeek and Legal Times, where she reported on the 1980s savings and loan crisis as well as critical policy debates over the direction of the nation's banking system.

Easton is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of U.C. Berkeley.