The Balance Review Process

Hilarey Gould is the editorial director of The Balance. During her 10+ years in the digital media space, she's developed a passion for economics, saving, investing, credit card perks, mortgage rates, and more. Hilarey began her career at TripAdvisor, and has since held full-time and freelance roles at a variety of media companies including realtor.com, Bankrate, and SmartAsset. Hilarey has a master's in journalism from the University of Missouri, and a bachelor's in journalism and professional writing from The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). She also works as an adjunct professor at TCNJ, teaching social media strategies to journalism students.

Sheri has more than 20 years in the investing and finance space. She previously worked as a financial journalist at The Bond Buyer and Prospect News, where she covered everything from munis to stocks to structured finance. When she was editor-in-chief for Finder.com's share trading and investing team, Sheri developed and executed content strategies to educate everyday people about smart investing, saving, and money management strategies to help them make better financial decisions. She is The Balance's associate editorial director of financial product reviews.

Yasmin Ghahremani is an Associate Editorial Director at The Balance, where she oversees educational content about consumer financial products, ranging from credit cards to life insurance. She joined the team in April 2019, bringing seven years of experience educating consumers about personal finance. She was previously a managing editor at CreditCards.com and Wise Bread, and a contract editor at LendingTree.

Yasmin has also had an extensive international career covering business, technology, and the environment for broadcast and print outlets, including CNN, CNBC, and Asiaweek magazine. She has a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia University.

Mrinalini is the senior investing editor at The Balance, with 10+ years of financial journalism experience across two continents and different media. She is passionate about creating comprehensible and usable financial content. She has previously worked with organizations such as Financial Times, Investopedia, Forbes and CNBC TV18. Mrinalini holds a master’s in business and economic reporting from New York University and a bachelor’s with honors in economics from the University of Delhi, India. 

Meredith Mangan is a senior editor for The Balance, focusing on insurance product reviews. She brings to the job 15 years of experience in finance, media, and financial markets. Meredith spent five years as the managing editor for Money Crashers; prior to that, she was a licensed insurance agent and financial advisor.

Meredith enjoys unravelling complex topics and conveying them in meaningful ways for readers. She holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry from New College of Florida.

Lars Peterson joined The Balance in 2019. Lars's primary areas of focus are credit cards, banking, mortgages, and other financial products and services, with the goal of helping consumers make the most of these offerings, while avoiding pitfalls or catches. With more than 10 years experience as a writer and editor in personal finance and small business, Lars has written and edited for Wise Bread, US News, and Amex OPENForum, among others. His 20+ years as an editor and writer have included roles in book publishing, marketing, technical writing, and travel.

Lars earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees in English, both from California State University, Long Beach.

Michael is the Senior Investing and Trading Platforms Editor at The Balance, where he is in charge of covering and building the company’s reviews of online brokers, robo advisors, cryptocurrency wallets, and forex exchanges. He has 20 years’ mutual fund, macro market research, institutional trading desk, and trading education experience. Michael is also a chartered member and Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the industry-leading Chartered Market Technicians (CMT) Association.

Marisa is the Content Integrity and Compliance Manager at The Balance. In addition to making sure all The Balance documents are in compliance, another key function of Marisa’s role is running all articles through a routine and rigorous fact-checking process, so we can feel confident we’re publishing the most accurate content.

Marisa kickstarted her compliance career at CreditCards.com after moving over from the oil and gas contract management industry. While at CreditCards.com, she used her expertise to bring its network of over 100 financial bloggers into compliance by keeping a pulse on the quickly changing industry regulations, attending industry-specific training programs and unifying each blogger's editorial goals with compliance requirements. She also helped oversee the Chase, Wells Fargo, and internal affiliate programs monitoring their network of hundreds of publishers. 

Brendan has been writing and editing content for nearly a decade, with a recent focus on finance, credit cards, and banking. As a senior editor for The Balance, he edits and fact-checks reviews of financial products and services.

Hannah leads a team of researchers who provide data-driven recommendations on financial services, and oversees product research and consumer research on investing and trading, cryptocurrency, and insurance. 

Prior to joining the The Balance team, Hannah served as a lead researcher for Fortune 500 companies and multinational biotech companies including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Takeda, where she studied user behaviors using eye-tracking, spatial tracking, and force sensors. Her experience leading rigorous studies for FDA reviews shaped her standard of research integrity which guides her work at The Balance.

In her spare time, she enjoys playing the keyboard and reading nonfiction.