Jimmy Soni

Last updated
Jimmy Soni
Born Toulouse, France
Occupation
  • Author
  • columnist
  • editor
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Duke University (BA)
Notable works A Mind at Play ,
The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley,
Rome's Last Citizen

Jimmy Soni is an American author and former managing editor of The Huffington Post . [1] [2] He is best known for A Mind at Play , his biography of Claude Shannon and The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley.

Contents

Background

Soni was born in Toulouse, France to Indian parents from Rajasthan and was raised in Chicago, Illinois. [3] He attended Duke University and graduated in 2007. [4] During his time at Duke he was chairman of the honors council and vice president of student government. [5] [6]

Career

Soni became the managing editor at The Huffington Post in January 2012. [7] Previously he had worked as a strategy consultant at McKinsey and Company, as well as a speech writer at the office of the Mayor of the District of Columbia. [8]

In 2012, Soni was named to AdWeek's "Young Influentials", a list of 20 people under 40 "who are wicked smart and rebooting your world". [2] He was featured at a TEDx event held at Duke University in March 2012. [5] [9]

In May 2014, Soni transferred to India where he was in charge of launching the Huffington Post in the country. [10] He left the company before the launch to focus on writing a book. [11] Later, reports surfaced saying more than a book prompted his departure: internal complaints and a sexual harassment investigation of his management style were cited by current and former employees at the time. Arianna Huffington declined to comment on the matter. [12] [13] [14]

In 2014, Forbes named Soni one of the 30 people under 30 years of age in the media. [15] That same year the New York Observer listed him as the most "poachable" tech talent. [16] Previously, Soni was named one of Crain Communications' 40 Under Forty talents. [17]

In 2016, Soni worked with Eric Greitens on his successful campaign for governor in Missouri. [18]

Written works

Soni has co-authored several pieces with fellow Duke graduate Rob Goodman; their work has been featured in Politico, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, AdWeek, and The Atlantic, among others. [1] [2] [7] [19] [20] In 2012, Thomas Dunne Books a division of St. Martin's Press, published their first book, a biography of Cato the Younger, titled Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar. [7] [21] [22]

In 2017, Simon & Schuster published their biography of Claude Shannon, A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age . [23] The book received positive reviews from the Wall Street Journal , Financial Times , Nature and others. [24] [25] [26] In an interview with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Soni explained that part of the reason he wrote A Mind at Play was that he was drawn to Shannon's personality and wanted to read a biography about him, but, "it turned out there wasn’t one." [27]

The British Society for the History of Mathematics awarded Soni and Goodman their 2017 Neumann Prize for A Mind at Play. [28]

In 2022, his second biography, The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley, was published by Simon & Schuster. [29] [30]

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 Byers, Dylan (January 10, 2012). "Nico Pitney out, Jimmy Soni in at HuffPost". Politico.
  2. 1 2 3 "The Young Influentials Adweek picks 20 under 40 who are wicked smart and rebooting your world". AdWeek. March 19, 2012.
  3. ↑ Man of Letters Archived 2015-05-30 at the Wayback Machine Vogue India. May 25, 2015
  4. ↑ Pompeo, Joe (January 10, 2012). "Top Arianna Huffington Deputy, managing editor Nico Pitney, to leave The Huffington Post". Capital New York.
  5. 1 2 "A Day in the Life of a Day". TEDx. 23 April 2012.
  6. ↑ Soni, Jimmy (May 18, 2010). "WLP Alumni Profile – Jimmy Soni, Class of 2004". Washington Leadership Program. Archived from the original on July 16, 2010. Retrieved August 11, 2012.
  7. 1 2 3 Lincoln, Kevin (January 10, 2012). "This 26-Year-Old Is About To Become The Managing Editor Of The Huffington Post". Business Insider. Archived from the original on May 3, 2013.
  8. ↑ Tate, Ryan (January 10, 2012). "Meet the 26-Year-Old Assistant Now Managing the Huffington Post Newsroom". Gawker.
  9. ↑ Lloyd, Glorida (April 2, 2012). "TEDxDuke speakers encourage innovation". Duke Chronicle.
  10. ↑ "HuffPost M.E. Jimmy Soni transfers to India | Capital New York". Archived from the original on 2014-05-23. Retrieved 2024-12-24.
  11. ↑ "HuffPost Reveals India Launch Details, Calling It a 'Critical Market' for Growth". 21 August 2014.
  12. ↑ "Former Huffington Post editor Jimmy Soni investigated for sexual harassment". Politico . 4 September 2014.
  13. ↑ "Top Huffington Post Editor Was Investigated for Sexual Harassment". 4 September 2014.
  14. ↑ "Arianna Huffington Ignored Sexual Misconduct at the Huffington Post". 14 November 2017.
  15. ↑ Bercovici, Jeff 30 Under 30: The Next Generation of Media Moguls, Machers and Mavens Forbes. May 25, 2015
  16. ↑ Mulshine, Molly, Jordyn Taylor, Jack Smith IV Betabeat's 2014 Most Poachable Tech Talent New York Observer. May 25, 2015
  17. ↑ 40 Under Forty Crain's New York Business. May 25, 2015
  18. ↑ Erickson, Kurt (20 December 2016). "Former Huffington Post editor on Greitens transition team".
  19. ↑ Soni, Jimmy (May 29, 2012). "National Security As Culture War: Why Civil Libertarians Lose the Argument". The Huffington Post.
  20. ↑ Soni, Jimmy (August 10, 2011). "Happy Birthday, Herbert Hoover: The Lost Legacy of a Hated President". The Atlantic.
  21. ↑ Goodman, Rob; Soni, Jimmy (16 October 2012). Rome's Last Citizen: The Life and Legacy of Cato, Mortal Enemy of Caesar. Macmillan. ISBN   978-0312681234.
  22. ↑ "Jimmy Soni on DukeConnect". DukeConnect. 15 May 2012.
  23. ↑ A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age. Amazon. 18 July 2017.
  24. ↑ George Dyson (21 July 2017). "The Elegance of Ones and Zeroes". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
  25. ↑ "The man who paved the way for the information age". Financial Times. 19 July 2017. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
  26. ↑ Vint Cerf (12 July 2017). "Information technology: A digital genius at play". Nature. 547 (7662): 159. Bibcode:2017Natur.547..159C. doi: 10.1038/547159a . S2CID   205094634.
  27. ↑ Stephen Cass (27 June 2017). "Meet the Authors of A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age". IEEE Spectrum. Retrieved 15 August 2017.
  28. ↑ "Neumann Prize". British Society for the History of Mathematics. Retrieved 13 February 2018.
  29. ↑ Jimmy Soni (22 February 2022). The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley. Simon and Schuster. ISBN   978-1501197260.
  30. ↑ Alexandra Jacobs (20 February 2022). "Ambitions and Emotions Run Hot in 'The Founders,' a History of PayPal". The New York Times.
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