Kara Swisher: Speaker | Event Host

Kara Swisher is a leading tech journalist, bestselling author, and influential podcast host known for incisive reporting, unmatched industry access, and sharp analysis shaping global conversations on technology and power.

  • Highlights:
    • Host of On with Kara Swisher and co host of Pivot
    • Editor at large at New York Magazine and CNN contributor
    • Co founder of Recode and the Code Conference
    • Widely regarded as the most influential journalist covering Silicon Valley
    • Creator of Burn Book: A Tech Love Story (2024)
  • Formats:

    Keynote speaker, moderator, and technology journalist

  • Audiences:

    Tech conferences, business leaders, policy forums, media organizations, universities, and events seeking candid insight on technology, leadership, and the future of innovation.

  • Outcomes:
    1. Clear, informed analysis of the forces shaping the tech ecosystem and emerging AI landscape.
    2. Candid, high energy commentary that challenges assumptions and sparks meaningful dialogue.
    3. Deep context on industry history, leadership behavior, and the implications of digital power.
Reading time: 2 min
Reviews: (0 reviews)
  • Travels from: San Francisco, CA
  • **Fee range: $75,001 - $100,000

Keynote Topics

Talent Short Bio

Kara Swisher is one of the most influential journalists in technology and a defining voice on the evolution of Silicon Valley, digital power, and the future of tech policy. Host of On with Kara Swisher, co host of the Pivot podcast, editor at large at New York Magazine, and a CNN contributor, she brings decades of frontline reporting and unparalleled access to the industry’s most consequential founders, executives, and innovators.

Swisher co founded Recode and the Code Conference, the country’s premier event on tech and media, after previously co producing and co hosting The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital series. She has interviewed leaders including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Ted Sarandos, shaping the public narrative around the commercial internet from its early days through today’s debates over platform power, misinformation, and the emergence of AI.

Named “Silicon Valley’s most feared but revered journalist,” Swisher has chronicled the tech industry since the early 1990s. Her forthcoming book, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, blends memoir and reportage to examine the triumphs and failures of the internet era and the responsibility the industry holds as AI accelerates another global shift.

Kara Swisher is the host of On with Kara Swisher and co-host of the Pivot podcast. She’s editor-at-large at New York Magazine and a CNN contributor. Swisher is the co-founder of the technology website, Recode, and tech conference, Code, which is the country’s premier conference on tech and media.

Considered the top reporter in the tech game, Swisher has been reporting on the industry since the early 1990s. She was there when Amazon was looking for its first headquarters in Seattle, when Google was in its garage and when Netflix was just a small startup.

Once called “Silicon Valley’s most feared but revered journalist” by New York Magazine, Swisher has established herself as the oracle of the tech world with unrivaled access to the industry’s most significant leaders.

In 2024, Swisher will publish Burn Book: A Tech Love Story — part memoir, part history, and ultimately a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead.

Burn Book includes soaring tales of innovation and brilliant entrepreneurs, as well as Silicon Valley’s much more complex history of striving, success, and failure. The book details how the commercial internet came into being and how, for all it has given the world, it now sits at the center of global power, creating a clear and present danger to humanity.

Yet despite the damage she chronicles, Kara Swisher remains optimistic about tech’s potential to help solve problems and not just create them. She calls upon the industry to make better, more thoughtful choices, even as a new set of powerful AI tools are poised to change the world yet again.

At its heart, this book is a love story to, for, and about tech from someone who knows it better than anyone. Kara Swisher is also the author of aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web, published by Times Business Books in July 1998. The sequel, There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future, was published in the fall of 2003 by Crown Business Books.

Kara Swisher was named to The Hollywood Reporter’s list of “Podcast Power Players” in 2022 and 2023, and to the 2023 Out 100.

She also received the “Pioneer Icon” award at the 2023 iHeart Podcast Awards. Additionally, Pivot was named one of the “Best Podcasts of 2022” by the New York Times and “Best Thought Leadership Podcast” at the 2022 Adweek Audio Awards.

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