Host and co-host, New York Media
National Judge

Kara Swisher is the host of the podcast "On With Kara Swisher," and co-host of the podcast "Pivot," both with New York Media. She is also a contributing writer for New York Magazine and a regular CNN contributor. Her latest book, “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story,” is a memoir of her years covering Silicon Valley and was published in February of 2024. The updated paperback version was released in March of 2025. She became a Livingston Awards judge in 2014.

Swisher was previously the host of the podcast "Sway" for The New York Times and was a contributing columnist for its Opinion section. She was also the host and executive producer of Vox Media’s Code conference, which has been the top gathering of tech and media luminaries. Previous to that, she hosted the Recode Decode podcast, co-founded Recode and Code owner Revere Digital and, before that, co-produced and co-hosted The Wall Street Journal’s “D: All Things Digital,” with Walt Mossberg. It was the major high-tech conference with interviewees such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and many other leading players in the tech and media industries. She and Mossberg were also the co-executive editors of a tech and media website, AllThingsD.com.

Swisher worked in the San Francisco bureau of The Wall Street Journal, where she wrote the column, “BoomTown,” which appeared on the front page of the Marketplace section and also on The Wall Street Journal Online at WSJ.com. Previously, Swisher covered breaking news about the web’s major players and Internet policy issues and wrote feature articles on technology for the paper.

Swisher was a reporter at The Washington Post and an editor at the City Paper of Washington, D.C. She is the author of “aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web,” and the sequel, “There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future.”

Swisher received her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and her graduate degree at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. She will join the Ford School faculty for the Fall 2025 semester as a Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence.