From 2012 to 2013, he was a voting member of the Pulitzer Prize Board before continuing to serve in an ex officio capacity as the dean of the Columbia Journalism School.

Following high school, he moved to Los Angeles, California, and enrolled in Occidental College, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

[10] On July 23, 2007, Coll was named as the next director of the New America Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C.[11][12] He has also contributed to the New York Review of Books, particularly about the war in Afghanistan.

[14] On March 18, 2013, it was announced that Coll would succeed Nick Lemann as the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, effective July 1, 2013.

[2][15] Coll's The Achilles Trap was published in 2024 to positive reviews, with The New York Times writing that it offers, "a more intimate picture of the dictator [Saddam Hussein]’s thinking about world politics, local power and his relationship to the United States than has been seen before".

[16] The Washington Post argued that despite its holistic picture of Hussein, Coll failed to accurately portray the CIA's motivations.