Maria Bartiromo

Maria Sara Bartiromo (born September 11, 1967) is an American conservative journalist and author who has also worked as a financial reporter and news anchor. She is the host of Mornings with Maria and Maria Bartiromo's Wall Street on the Fox Business channel, and Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo on the Fox News channel.

Bartiromo worked at CNN as a producer for five years before joining CNBC in 1993, where she worked on-air for 20 years. With CNBC, she was the host of Closing Bell and On the Money with Maria Bartiromo. She was the first television journalist to deliver live television reports from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. She has won several awards for her work on these programs, including two Emmy Awards. Nicknamed the "Money Honey", she garnered considerable attention within the financial industry in addition to the media. Her work for CNBC was largely non-political in its subject matter and approach.

In 2013, she left CNBC to host shows for Fox. During the first presidency of Donald Trump, she became an advocate for the Trump administration, giving him frequent unchallenging interviews. She is one of three Fox Corporation program hosts named in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit by Smartmatic relating to unproven conspiracy theories used in attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election. As of April 2023, the lawsuit was in the discovery phase. Bartiromo was among the hosts named in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network defamation lawsuit for broadcasting false statements about the plaintiff company's voting machines that Fox News settled for $787.5 million and required Fox News to acknowledge that the broadcast statements were false.

Bartiromo was born to Italian-American parents Vincent and Josephine Bartiromo, and was raised in the Dyker Heights area of Brooklyn in New York City. Her father owned the Rex Manor restaurant in Brooklyn, and her mother served as the hostess. Her mother also worked as a clerk at an off-track betting parlor. Her mother's family was from Agrigento, Sicily. Her grandfather Carmine Bartiromo immigrated to the United States from Nocera, Campania in 1933, settling in New York and serving in the US Armed Forces.

Bartiromo attended Fontbonne Hall Academy, an all-girls private Catholic school in Bay Ridge. During this time, she worked at the coat check at her father's restaurant and as a stock clerk at a wedding dress shop. She was fired from the latter for trying on newly arrived dresses before putting them away; she recalled "I cried the whole way home, but I learned a valuable lesson and that is – do your job."

Bartiromo started college at C. W. Post before transferring to New York University. During her college years, she worked at the same betting parlor where her mother worked. She graduated from NYU's Washington Square Campus in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and economics.

While at NYU, she became involved with radio, interning on Barry Farber's show on WMCA 570. Farber was impressed by her willingness and capability in doing behind-the-scenes tasks associated with the role. Following that, she interned at CNN.

After her internship, which began in 1988 or 1989, Bartiromo spent five years as an executive producer and assignment editor with CNN Business. Her supervisor at CNN was Lou Dobbs, who later became a colleague at Fox Business. She also worked as a production assistant for Stuart Varney there.