Joel Pollak

Joel Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large and In-house Counsel at Breitbart News. He was born in South Africa and raised in the Chicago suburbs, where he attended Niles North High School. After graduating from Harvard College with high honors in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy, he was a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar in South Africa. He later served as chief speechwriter for the Leader of the Opposition in the South African Parliament, and completed a Master of Arts degree in Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town. Back home in the United States, he graduated from Harvard Law School and went on to work as a Research Fellow at the Hudson Institute. He ran, unsuccessfully, for U.S. Congress in 2010, but befriended conservative media pioneer Andrew Breitbart along the way, later joining him in Los Angeles, where they worked side-by-side transforming a blog into a 24-hour news website that would go on to change American politics. He is the author of several books, including How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution. He is also a winner of the Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He lives in Santa Monica, California with his wife Julia (née Bertelsmann), daughter Maya and son Alexander.