Sheila Sitalsing

Sheila Sitalsing (Paramaribo, 1968) grew up in Suriname and Curacao and majored in Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

For the past 28 years, she has worked successively for Rotterdams Dagblad, Elsevier and De Volkskrant as a financial-economic reporter, European Union correspondent in Brussels, head of the Economics desk, and political editor in Den Haag.

Between 2009 and 2011 she worked in Suriname for Star News. Nowadays she is a freelance journalist (radiohost, political commentator) and she writes a column for De Volkskrant, three times a week, about politics and economics. She’s the Heldring Prize winner for best columnist in the Netherlands.

Together with Hans Wansink she wrote De Kiezer Heeft Altijd Gelijk (The Voter Is Always Right) (2010, Nieuw Amsterdam Uitgevers). Mark, portrait of a prime minister (Prometheus), was published in 2016. Her columns about the corona year 2020 are bundled in Diary of An Insane Year (January 2021, the Bezige Bij).

She was a board member of De Tegel (annual prizes for journalism in the Netherlands) and is currently a board member of the Media Fund Haarlem (for the promotion of regional (research) journalism).