Dorinda Elliott is Editor at Large at ChinaFile. In her “day job,” she is Global Affairs Editor at Condé Nast Traveler, where she spearheads coverage of global issues and corporate social responsibility in the travel industry.
Elliott has had a life-long interest in China, dating back to her studies in Taiwan as an undergraduate in 1978. She covered the beginnings of China’s economic reforms in 1984 for BusinessWeek magazine, and served as Beijing bureau chief for Newsweek magazine from 1987 to 1990. During that time, she covered China’s opening up to the outside world, culminating in the student movement of 1989 and the crackdown that followed. Elliott later lived in Hong Kong for a decade, traveling and reporting across China.
At Condé Nast Traveler, Elliott has written about China’s avant-garde art movement, the Chinese antiquities trade, Shanghai as financial powerhouse, Macau as gambling mecca, and Taiwan as thriving democracy, as well as edited numerous stories about China. Before joining Traveler, Elliott was an Assistant Managing Editor at Time magazine. She lived overseas for twenty years, as Newsweek Bureau Chief in Beijing, Moscow, and Hong Kong, then as Asia Editor. As Editor of Time's Asiaweek in 2000-2001, she relaunched the magazine with a new focus on China and business.
Elliott’s team at Newsweek won an Overseas Press Club Award for coverage of Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. She graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in East Asian Studies. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, and speaks rusty Russian and French. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., with her husband Adi Ignatius. They have three sons.
