Debbie Van Tassel has held various editing positions at The Plain Dealer since joining the paper as business editor in 1999. Her staff has produced a number of award-winning reports on the steel industry and the regional economy and introduced the popular consumer-oriented Business Monday section. She became Assistant Managing Editor/Features at The Plain Dealer in October, after directing the redesign of the Monday paper to introduce reader-friendly alternative formats.

She was also Business Editor at the Seattle Times and the Akron Beacon Journal. While in Akron, she was a special projects editor and supervised a yearlong report on the rise and fall of the rubber industry, which became the book “Wheels of Fortune”, a best-seller for its publisher, the University of Akron Press.

A native of New Jersey, she graduated from Seton Hall University with a degree in communications and began her journalism career at the now-defunct Woodbridge, N.J. News Tribune.