Andrew Ross Sorkin
Andrew Ross Sorkin (born February 19, 1977) is an American journalist and author. He is a financial columnist for The New York Times and a co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Box. He is also the founder and editor of DealBook, a financial news service published by The New York Times. He wrote the bestselling book Too Big to Fail and co-produced a movie adaptation of the book for HBO Films. He is also a co-creator of the Showtime series Billions.[1][2]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
February 19, 1977
- Journalist
- television writer
- producer
1996–present
3
Early life and education[edit]
Sorkin was born in New York City, the son of Joan Ross Sorkin, a playwright, and Laurence T. Sorkin, a partner at the law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel.[3] Sorkin graduated from Scarsdale High School in 1995 and earned a Bachelor of Science in communication from Cornell University in 1999 where he was a member of Sigma Pi fraternity.[4] He is not related to writer Aaron Sorkin, who also grew up in Scarsdale.[5] He is of Jewish descent.[6][7]
Career[edit]
Journalist[edit]
Sorkin first joined The New York Times as a student intern during his senior year in high school. He also worked for the paper while he was in college, with 71 articles published before he graduated. He began by writing media and technology articles while assisting the advertising columnist, Stuart Elliott. Sorkin spent the summer of 1996 working for Businessweek, before returning to The New York Times. He moved to London for part of 1998. While there, he wrote about European business and technology for The New York Times and then returned to Cornell to complete his studies. At Cornell, he was vice president of the Sigma Pi fraternity.
Television[edit]
In July 2011, Sorkin became a co-anchor on CNBC's Squawk Box in addition to his duties at The New York Times. Sorkin has appeared on NBC's Today show, Charlie Rose and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, MSNBC's Hardball and Morning Joe, ABC's Good Morning America, The Chris Matthews Show, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, the BBC World Service, Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and was a frequent guest host of CNBC's Squawk Box before joining the ensemble. Sorkin also hosted a weekly seven-part, half-hour PBS talk-show series called It's the Economy, NY, which focused on how the evolving economic crisis was affecting New Yorkers.[23]
Along with Brian Koppelman and David Levien, Sorkin is a co-creator of the Showtime series Billions, an American television drama series starring Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis.[24] The series is loosely based on crusading federal prosecutor of financial crimes, Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.[24][25] The show premiered in January 2016.
Sorkin appeared in a cameo on the 35th season of The Simpsons in a parody on Silicon Valley where Sorkin interviews Mr. Burns and Persephone in an episode first aired on 29 October 2023.[26]
Awards[edit]
Sorkin shared the Gerald Loeb Award in 2005 for Deadline Writing[30] and earned another for Business Book in 2010 for his book Too Big to Fail.[28] He also won a Society of American Business Editors and Writers Award for breaking news in 2005 and again in 2006. In 2007, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader.[31] Also in 2007, SiliconAlleyInsider.com named Sorkin one of New York's "most influential scribes."[32] In 2008, Vanity Fair magazine named Sorkin as one of 40 new members of the "Next Establishment,"[33] and he appeared on the UJA Federation's 2013 list of 40 under 40 top "movers and shakers" in the Jewish community.[6] He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2022, Sorkin won an Emmy Award for his New York Times interview with WeWork founder Adam Neumann.[34]
In popular culture[edit]
In the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad, called "Granite State," Sorkin is briefly referenced.[35] He is said to have written an op-ed in The New York Times accusing fictional entrepreneurs Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz of making donations to drug rehabilitation centers in the hopes of cleansing their company's image after the Walter White scandal.[35] Sorkin later wrote the entire fictional article.[35][36]
Personal life[edit]
Sorkin married Pilar Jenny Queen on June 9, 2007.[37]
Sorkin has a coloboma in his left eye that sometimes makes it appear as if he has two different colored eyes.[38]