Melissa Harris is a business columnist at The Chicago Tribune. Her twice-weekly column, Chicago Confidential, chronicles the city’s corporate elite – from their boardroom deals to who’s hanging out with the powerful, to who's just hanging on.

Prior to joining the Chicago Tribune, Melissa Harris covered crime for The Baltimore Sun and local government for The Orlando Sentinel, both Tribune Co. newspapers. She has worked for the company since the summer of 2001 when she interned in the Sentinel's Washington bureau. A graduate of Northwestern and Johns Hopkins universities, she landed her first “job” at age 15, covering prep sports for the Mason Pulse-Journal. By her senior year of high school, she felt she had made it when the paper paid her $25 per story.

Old movies, reading, working out, traveling, playing the piano, good food and sports. (College: Northwestern and Indiana; NFL: Ravens; MLB: Reds, Cubs, Orioles)

Citadel's Kenneth Griffin exposes 'cronyism,' causes a stir at Economic Club 5/22/2013
Hedge fund manager criticizes Democratic control of city, state government Citadel LLC founder Kenneth Griffin named and shamed local corporations that have taken tax incentives from the financially strapped state in a speech to a prominent Chicago business group.

Harris: Google's Eric Schmidt on North Korea and technology's future 5/18/2013
Executive chairman, co-author stop in Chicago while promoting book Google's glasses may one day whisper in your ear an old acquaintance's name when you unexpectedly bump into them at a party.

JPMorgan board members targeted by shareholder advisers 5/12/2013
Results of election to be announced May 21 JPMorgan Chase, one of the nation's largest banks, survived the financial crisis better than most — only to have the $6 billion "London Whale" trading loss last year expose embarrassing flaws in its accounting and risk controls.

Harris: Patrick Fitzgerald offers lesson on complexities of terrorism law 5/9/2013
Former U.S. attorney, colleague take students 'into the sausage factory' Complex. Even messy.

Harris: Digital startup makes move to challenge Facebook 5/2/2013
Maura Daley, niece of former mayor, helps bring Cayova to Chicago The idea behind Cayova, a startup moving its headquarters to Chicago via Dublin, is that the time we spend in the digital world and the information we share about ourselves is a valuable commodity to marketers.