Heather Long is chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union and a frequent guest on TV, radio and podcasts to break down what's going on in the U.S. economy without the jargon. Prior to joining Navy Federal, Heather spent almost 20 years as an award-winning economic journalist at The Washington Post, CNN and her hometown paper: The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.

At Navy Federal, Heather focuses daily on how to improve the economy for military service members, veterans, and the American middle-class. She is a regular contributor to Marketplace Radio and has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, BBC, Fox Business, CNBC, CBS, PBS, C-SPAN, etc.

Heather won the 2024 Gerald Loeb Award for commentary for a Washington Post series on how to revive America's comatose downtowns after the pandemic, and she won several SABEW "Best in Business" awards for her coverage of the pandemic recession and the challenging rebound. She was among the first to spot the "Great Re-assessment of work" in 2021.

Before The Washington Post, Heather was an editor at CNN in charge of the markets and economy team, and a columnist and deputy editor at The Patriot-News when it won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting. Heather holds a master's degree in financial economics from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.