Sally Kohn

Sally Kohn is one of the leading progressive voices in America. She is currently a CNN contributor and columnist for the Daily Beast. Sally was previously a Fox News contributor, the motivation for her widely-seen TED talk, as well as a regular guest on MSNBC. Sally’s writing has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, New York Magazine, More Magazine, Reuters, USA Today, Salon, Politico, Time and many other outlets. Her work has been highlighted by outlets from the Colbert Report to the New York Times to the National Review. In 2014, Mediaite listed Sally as one of the top 9 rising stars in cable news and The Advocate ranked Sally as the 35th most influential gay person in the media.

Sally also works as a communications consultant, providing media training and public speaking coaching to political candidates, corporate executives and non-profit leaders.

Previously, Sally was Senior Campaign Strategist with the Center for Community Change, a 45-year-old hub of grassroots organizations nationwide. Sally served as co-director of ideas and innovation for the Center, helping lead the pioneering Campaign for Community Values, producing a nationally televised Presidential candidate forum in 2008, developing a new media organizing project on health care reform in rural communities and spearheading several other initiatives.

Before that, Sally held a program fellowship at the Ford Foundation, helping to manage more than $15 million in annual grants to social justice organizations nationwide. She was also strategic advisor to the Social Justice Infrastructure Funders, a private network of 25 top program staff from some of the nation’s most prominent foundations, working to identify a shared strategy and coordinate grantmaking. Before that, Sally served as Executive Director of the Third Wave Foundation, the leading young women’s organization in the country. She was also a distinguished Vaid Fellow at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, where she published a groundbreaking guidebook for organizing campaigns to win domestic partnership benefits. Sally also worked as a consultant with the Urban Justice Center, publishing a report on the experiences of gay youth in the New York juvenile justice system.

Sally received a joint degree in law and public administration from New York University and was a Root Tilden public service scholar at the New York University School of Law. She received her undergraduate degree from George Washington University in D.C. Originally from Allentown, Pennsylvania, Sally now resides in Brooklyn, New York, with her partner Sarah Hansen and their daughter Willa.