[3] Previously, Chira was a senior correspondent and editor covering gender for The New York Times.

She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University in 1980, graduating summa cum laude.

She has also been the metropolitan reporter at bureaus in Albany, New York, and Stamford, Connecticut, national education correspondent, deputy editor of the Foreign desk, editor of The Week in Review,[7] and editorial director of book development.

[9] She shared the 2018 Gerald Loeb Award for Investigative Journalism for her reporting on the sexual predator allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein that led to the Me Too movement.

[10][11] Chira is married to Michael Shapiro,[12] a professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.