Jon Fortt

Fortt was born on Long Island, New York. His family later moved to Washington, D.C., where he attended Montgomery Blair High School and was president of the Student Government Association in the 1993–94 school year and organized protests to push Montgomery County to build a new school in its current location, then known as the Kay tract.[13][14] In his senior year, he won the Knight-Ridder Minority Journalism Scholarship.[13] He attended DePauw University, where he was part of the Media Fellows honors program. There he worked at The DePauw student newspaper and became editor.[15][13] He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English Writing.[16][17] On May 22, 2022, he delivered the commencement address at DePauw, a message called "Love, Truth and Impact."[18] He joined DePauw's board of trustees in October 2022.[19]

Fortt began his post-college career at the Lexington Herald-Leader in Lexington, Kentucky, where he was assigned the technology beat in 1999 after another reporter suddenly quit. Later that year he moved to California to join the San Jose Mercury News in San Jose, California.[20][21] In 2006 he went to Business 2.0 magazine as a senior editor in charge of the "What Works" section.[22]

In 2007, he joined Fortune magazine as a senior writer covering large companies including Apple Inc., Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft.[23][24] Fortt began working for CNBC in 2010 as a Silicon Valley-based technology correspondent.[25][26]

In 2013, he relocated to CNBC headquarters. [27] He joined the board of the National Summer Learning Association, a non-profit, in 2021.[28]