Rich Pliskin has extensive experience communicating complex ideas and information to expert and lay audiences alike.

As a legal affairs reporter in New Jersey, he won awards for investigative, enterprise, and business reporting. He later moved to the government side as a public affairs officer for the New Jersey Supreme Court, and then to the education sector as a writer for a global, nonprofit education research, policy, and assessment organization. He returned to the law as a speechwriter for the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, DC, before coming to Niskanen in September 2025.

Rich earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. He has taught undergraduate writing at Rutgers University, the George Washington University, and the University of the District of Columbia. His freelance humor credits include the New York Times and NPR.