New Role for Mohammed Hadi

By now, we all should know Mohammed Hadi.

Mo joined The Times in 2018 as the Business desk's first news director. He was promoted to deputy business editor and then in 2024 principal deputy business editor.

And now, as you have likely noticed, Mo is taking on his biggest role yet at The Times: He is our next news director, days.

How fortunate we all are.

Mo takes on this pivotal position at a time when the news is nonstop and of tremendous consequence. He is the perfect editor for the role. Mo knows The Times. He is among the most collegial of colleagues and he is deeply committed to our newsroom and its mission.

"Mo is a super great editor and now the whole newsroom will benefit from his excellent judgement, sharp reading and powerful sense of calm," said Ellen Pollock, who hired Mo away from Business Insider and was gracious enough to encourage him to take on this newsroomwide role. "We will really, really, really miss him in Biz but take solace in the knowledge that henceforth all business stories will appear on the top third of the home page."

In his new role, Mo will be working closely with the News Desk editors and all of you across the newsroom to build and lift the report each day. He will collaborate with the Home and visual teams. He will help ensure that news pieces in all formats are clearly written, well structured and meet our high standards. He will work closely with the home page so it remains dynamic and appealing to our global audience. And of course, he will make sure we are on top of the most important news stories each day.

Mo has had a long and varied career even before he landed at 620. He reported from New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai about everything from central bank policy to insider trading in the U.S. options market. At Business Insider, where he was executive editor, Mo helped guide the work of 120 journalists in the U.S. newsroom, and at The Wall Street Journal, he helped reimagine the Heard on the Street column as the news editor in charge of Asia.

Mo was born in Pakistan and grew up in Dubai. He came to the United States as an undergraduate at the University of Richmond and later earned a master's degree from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs . During his first week at Columbia, Mo was in front of a classroom delivering a presentation w hen a classmate burst in and said "Someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center."

That was the start of a challenging time in America for an immigrant student from Pakistan. But Mo confronted it as you might expect, by practicing journalism.

Please congratulate Mo on his new role.

- Michael