Sarah NordgrenSarah Nordgren is deputy managing editor of global staff recruiting and director of state news for the Associated Press (AP), the largest and oldest news service in the world.
Based in AP’s Chicago bureau, Nordgren leads a team that oversees AP journalists and news reports in all 50 states and coordinates recruitment, hiring and retention efforts for the news cooperative’s global news staff, addressing such issues as diversity, development needs and succession planning.
Nordgren joined the AP in 1985 in Chicago. Her assignments have included reporter, specializing in children and family issues, desk supervisor and assistant chief of bureau. She won three Lisagor Awards from the
Chicago Headline Club, one each for writing, reporting and magazine writing. In 1999, she left to become Page 1 editor at the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Ill., but returned to AP a year later to take a position as deputy director of state news. She was promoted to director of state news in 2003 and, last February, was appointed to the additional role of deputy managing editor.
A native of Omaha, Neb., Nordgren graduated from William Smith College and earned a master’s degree in American Studies from Boston University. She previously worked for Chicago’s City News Bureau and for United Press International. A founding member of the Association for Women Journalists-Chicago, Nordgren lives in the city’s Ravenswood neighborhood with her husband, Joseph Cronin, a psychotherapist, and her twin children, Caitlin and Benjamin, who are in college.