Amy Harder is the founding executive editor of Cipher. She is one of the top national energy and climate change reporters in the country, having built up a reputation of being a uniquely balanced and influential journalist with respect across the spectrum.

With more than a dozen years of experience under her belt, Amy believes seeing energy infrastructure up close and interviewing people directly affected by it is paramount to ensure a well-rounded story.  

Amy has toured everything from an underground coal mine in West Virginia to a wind farm in Australia to a carbon capture facility in Norway. She has also interviewed some of the most well-known leaders in this space, and at the same time, bridges the gap between what leaders say and what everyday people care about. 

She began her career at National Journal, a Washington, D.C.-based publication, covering the fracking and oil and natural gas boom of the 2010s. She was then recruited by The Wall Street Journal to lead its Washington, D.C. energy coverage. In 2017, Axios hired her as one of their first two energy reporters when it launched that year. While at Axios, she quickly fortified her leading journalistic voice on climate change before it had become broadly mainstream. 

Amy was the inaugural journalism fellow for the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago for the 2018-2019 school year, where she moderated events and took part in other university initiatives. 

Breakthrough Energy recruited Amy in early 2021 to launch an independent news outlet helping to educate people on complex climate technologies. First launched in 2021 as a newsletter platform, Cipher expanded to a full news website in 2023. 

She has appeared on PBS NewsHour, CSPAN, MSNBC, CBS and NPR, among many other media outlets. She is regularly sought out to speak and participate in events, including moderating and participating in panel discussions, and giving speeches around the country and the world.