Schiffrin is an American former business journalist. Previously, Schiffrin was editor-in-chief of the Istanbul-based daily newspaper The Turkish Times, a stringer for Reuters in Barcelona, senior financial writer at The Industry Standard in New York, bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires in Amsterdam and Hanoi, and a writer for many other publications. She was a former Knight-Bagehot academic fellow in business journalism at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism

As well as her role in the School of International and Public Affairs, Schiffrin is also the director of journalism training programs at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, an international network of economists based at Columbia, and founder of journalismtraining.net.

She is the daughter of the author and publisher André Schiffrin, and the sister in law of the lawyer Philippe Sands. She was married on October 29, 2004, to Nobel Prize-winning economist and author Joseph E. Stiglitz, who teaches at Columbia University in New York City.