Tofel served as a vice president of Dow Jones & Company from 1997 until joining the International Freedom Center, and as the assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal beginning in 2002.
He was also a director on the joint venture boards of SmartMoney and Vedomosti, the leading Russian business newspaper.
Before joining Dow Jones, Tofel was an associate at the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler from 1983 to 1986.
A native New Yorker, Tofel's previous public service includes stints during the administration of New York City Mayor Edward Koch as executive director of the Beattie Commission on reorganizing the Human Resources Administration and as a member of the Liman Commission investigating the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
He is a member of the board of trustees of Wildcat Service Corp., the advisory board of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship Program in Economics and Business Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.