Rick Berke is the co-founder and executive editor of STAT, an award-winning media company focused on finding and telling compelling stories about health, medicine, and scientific discovery. He moved to Boston in early 2015 as STAT's Employee #1, charged with assembling a world-class staff to cover health, medicine, and the life sciences. He got his start as a reporter for the Baltimore Evening Sun. From there, he spent most of his career at the New York Times, where he was chief political correspondent and covered assignments including Congress, the White House, and national drug policy. As an editor, for many years he organized the Times' daily news coverage as assistant managing editor for news. He was also assistant managing editor for features, as well as Washington editor, national editor, political editor, and video content editor. Before launching STAT, he was executive editor of Politico. He was elected in 2023 to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has been a visiting lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and was a longtime member of the senior advisory committee of the Institute of Politics at Harvard.