Leslie Anne Morgan was born in
Washington, D.C. and is a 1987 graduate of
Harvard College and 1992 earned an MBA from the
Wharton School of Business. Steiner's first published work was an autobiographical account of her teenage struggle with
anorexia nervosa, published in
Seventeen in September 1986. The article, "Starving for Perfection", was written under the pseudonym Isabel Johnson and received over 4000 reader letters, at the time a record for
Seventeen, and appeared in the 1993 anthology
The College Reader. Steiner went on to work in the Articles Department for
Seventeen from 1987-1988. She was a freelance magazine writer and consultant from 1988-1990. She earned an MBA degree in Marketing from the
Wharton School of Business at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1992. Her corporate marketing career included stints at the
Leo Burnett advertising agency in
Chicago and
Johnson & Johnson in
New Brunswick, New Jersey. At Johnson & Johnson she launched the low-calorie sweetener ingredient
sucralose, also known as Splenda Brand Sweetener, internationally from 1994-2000. She oversaw the public relations program for the sweetener's
United States Food and Drug Administration approval on April 1, 1999. In early 2001 Steiner returned to her hometown of Washington, D.C., to become general manager of
The Washington Post Magazine. While working for
The Washington Post, Steiner became interested in the struggles of and tensions between American
working and
stay-at-home mothers. Her anthology
Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face off on their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families was published in 2006 by
Random House and the essays by a range of at-home and working mothers such as
Jane Smiley,
Susan Cheever,
Carolyn Hax and
Jane Juska generated extensive media interest and controversy among conflicted American mothers, including mommy bloggers, daddy bloggers and publications such as
The Atlantic Monthly, the
Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. After the book's publication, Steiner continued to interpret the mommy wars, including the controversy created by the nomination of Alaska governor
Sarah Palin as the Republican Party's vice presidential candidate and
Michelle Obama's position as the first African-American first lady. From 2006 to 2008, Steiner wrote
On Balance, an online column exploring work/family conflicts for washingtonpost.com, the Internet site for her employer.
On Balance, one of the site's first forays into the
blogosphere, quickly became popular among a diverse audience of men and women with and without children. Over the course of two years, Steiner's column became one of the most popular "
mommy blogs" on the web. Steiner wrote over 500 columns, and the site accumulated over 100,000 comments from online posters. The readership weighed in with up to 700 comments per day. Over the course of 27 months, 112,898 total comments were submitted by 11,735 different posting names and 16,632 anonymous posters. Steiner's 2009 memoir
Crazy Love, about surviving
domestic violence spent three weeks on
The New York Times Best Seller list. Steiner is the author of a popular TED Talk which tries to explain why victims stay with abusive partners. Her third book,
The Baby Chase: How Surrogacy Is Transforming the American Family, was published by
St. Martin's Press in 2013, and is the subject of a 2014 TEDTalk about the ethics of global surrogacy. Her most recent memoir is
The Naked Truth, published by
Simon & Schuster in 2019. It is the story of rediscoverying herself as an older woman in the wake of her second divorce. In May 2022, she wrote an
op-ed on her plans to wear a bikini on the beach at age 56. Steiner has three children and lives in the District of Columbia, East Hampton, and New Hampshire. ==References==