Biopharma Beats Bulletin: Spotlight on Anjalee Khemlani, Formerly Yahoo Finance Senior Health Reporter

Background

• Name: Anjalee Khemlani
• Email: [email protected]
• Home Base: New York City
• Role: Senior Healthcare Reporter at Yahoo Finance, covering earnings, financial milestones, and major company developments with a focus on adding context and analysis beyond the numbers.
• Expertise: Born in Jamaica to an Indian family, Anjalee brings a global perspective to healthcare coverage while maintaining deep roots in fundamental journalism skills. Her path from reluctant TV presence to on-air contributor reflects her commitment to impactful storytelling. Anjalee followed a non-linear career trajectory that began with reporting for community newspapers and evolved through trade publications before landing at Yahoo Finance six years ago—her longest tenure anywhere.

“I decided I wanted to be a reporter in the ninth grade. I loved the idea of research.” When the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened, one of Anjalee’s teachers had a brother who was a New York Times videographer. She saw how he was covering the events of the day while trying to locate his family. “I remember thinking, wow, something in me feels like I can do that process, cover something that’s happening in real time. And write it and present it in a way that an audience will understand from a bird’s eye view, like I can pull myself out of the situation and understand what’s going on.”

Beat Overview

• Publication: Yahoo Finance is the number one business and finance platform by monthly traffic, serving both institutional and retail investors with free, accessible financial tools and data. It provides financial news, data and commentary including stock quotes, press releases, financial reports and original programming. Its diverse audience includes industry professionals needing quick stock checks and individual investors seeking market insights without paywall barriers. Yahoo Finance sees more than 40 million unique visitors per month.
• Coverage Areas: Earnings analysis and financial milestones form the core coverage, though she notes: “Will I cover the latest drug approval? Not unless it’s something really significant.” Her focus extends to AI implementation in healthcare, healthcare delivery innovations, and the industry’s response to political pressures and foreign competition, particularly China-related deals. Her specialty is adding context and analysis to earnings reports and company news.
• Angles of Interest: She approaches healthcare coverage through a business lens while seeking to bridge industry complexity with broader understanding. “I’m really interested in understanding the reality behind it, versus the dreams,” she explains regarding AI coverage. Healthcare delivery models, labor shortages, and how the industry protects itself against DC pressures and foreign competition drive her investigative interests. She aims to make it easier for a non-finance reader to be more engaged with what’s going on with companies. “There is such a gap in the industry talking to industry, business side talking to the business side and what’s deemed as a consumer angle. Nobody is combining all three. I really want to do that.”

Pitching Tips

• Email Strategy: Provide comprehensive information upfront, treating your pitch like SEO optimization. “If you give me everything in mind… who it is you’re pitching, what company you’re pitching, what do they do? What relevant, current topics they can talk about. I may eventually get back to it may be a year later.” She emphasizes that detailed initial pitches create searchable references for future stories.
• Subject Matter Expertise: Know your audience and ensure your spokesperson can discuss trending topics beyond company-specific information. “If they are not a subject matter expert beyond the company, I will not be able to talk to them.” Sources must demonstrate genuine expertise rather than regurgitating publicly available information.
• Follow-up Protocol: Persistence has limits. “If I do not respond to it, and you feel the urge to check, you are welcome to if I still don’t respond, please give up.” Direct communication about coverage decisions should be respected absolutely.

Pet Peeves

• Ignoring Coverage Boundaries: Continuing to pitch topics after she’s explicitly stated they fall outside her coverage area. “If I’ve already told you that I’m not going to cover this topic, and you keep trying to pitch me on it, I’m going to block you.”
• Patient Story Pitches: Stories focused on patient impact or individual patient narratives don’t align with her business-focused beat. “Anything about the patient impact or patient stories, because I can’t do anything with that.”
• Wellness Spam: Off-beat pitches about general wellness topics, diet surveys, or lifestyle trends that have no connection to business healthcare coverage.
• Vague Outreach: Generic pitches asking “can I talk to you?” without specific topics or context will never receive responses.

Events and Conferences

• HLTH Conference: Regular participation, often as a moderator for panels and discussions
• World Vaccine Congress: Annual coverage emphasizing industry developments and business implications
• Selective Participation: She chooses events where she can moderate panels for optimal ROI, noting “I go to conferences where I am moderating because I find that that has the best sort of ROI for me.”

Key Quotes

“I started in this industry because of an instinctive feeling. And that instinctive feeling has not gone away. That drive is still there. So when you’re engaging with me, just know that I’m really passionate about what I do.”

“I understand why news has a bad rep right now… people who spend time right from when they get out of college in big newsrooms, spoon-fed to a degree, the resources – and they don’t learn original sourcing.You can argue we are in an AI world. That’s why reporters need to understand sourcing better than ever. We’ve gotten used to an aggregate world where we don’t know the sources.”

“The reason why you’re in this industry is because you have a passion for information and a passion for sharing that information. So if you’re not fulfilling those basic tenets, what are you doing?”

“I am the type of person that likes to have a seat at the table but not be at the head of it. So when it comes to my industry, I’m very passionate about it at large.”

Lightning Round

• Dream Pitch Subject Line: “A study with data to prove that all one way or another, how the various healthcare access efforts over the years have panned out to include population health, Social Determinants of Health, retail health and telehealth.”
• Never Open Subject Line: Wellness surveys unrelated to business healthcare, such as relationship and diet studies with dubious healthcare connections
• Something Fun She’s Known For: Bollywood dancing—initially tried to keep it separate from her professional profile but eventually embraced it as part of her identity
• Industry Passion: Bridging the gap between industry jargon and public understanding: “There is such a gap… no one is combining all three” when discussing the disconnect between business coverage, industry analysis, and consumer angles