Mara Der Hovanesian is the Finance and Banking Dept. editor at BusinessWeek. Before joining BusinessWeek in May, 2000, she covered mutual funds and personal finance for Dow Jones and for Knight-Ridder newspapers. Der Hovanesian received her master’s in economics from California State University in San Francisco in 1990. She won a first-place award from the Associated Press for business writing in 1996 and a scholarship to the Institute for Political Journalism at Georgetown University in 1986.