Zack O’Malley Greenburg is the author of five books, including the Jay-Z biography Empire State of Mind (re-released by Penguin in 2021) and A-List Angels: How a Band of Actors, Artists and Athletes Hacked Silicon Valley (Little, Brown, 2020). A former Forbes senior editor, he has also written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, McSweeney's, Grist and the Library of Congress. Zack has been a source for BBC, NPR and 60 Minutes, and a speaker at SXSW, CES, TEDx, Princeton and Harvard. He is an investor in several climate technology startups and writes a Substack newsletter on the business of media & entertainment.
Zack played the title role in the 1992 film Lorenzo's Oil; he started his writing career at age 14 as a video game reviewer for Boys’ Life. In 2007, he graduated Yale with an American Studies degree and joined Forbes, where he stayed for nearly 15 years. He penned over 1,000 stories, including a dozen-plus covers on subjects from Kanye West to Richard Branson to Katy Perry. Zack has reported on everything from hedge fund schemes to the Wu-Tang Clan's secret album, pioneering Forbes’ hip-hop coverage while helping launch the 30 Under 30 franchise and related events. He graduated from Columbia’s Knight-Bagehot fellowship in 2023 and lives in New York with his wife and baby.