About

Richard Wolffe is a best-selling author and Emmy Award-winning executive producer.

He has worked closely with chef and humanitarian José Andrés for two decades: creating, managing and executing his media and communications strategy, from op-eds and speeches to books, podcasts and streaming shows. He was executive producer of the Emmy-nominated National Geographic movie We Feed People, and the Emmy-winning Discovery series José Andrés And Family In Spain.

Wolffe’s latest book with Andrés is Change The Recipe: Because You Can’t Build A Better World Without Breaking Some Eggs, to be published by Ecco in April 2025. His previous book was Relentless: My Story Of The Latino Spirit That Is Transforming America, a collaboration with Luis Miranda, published by Hachette in May 2024.

An MSNBC political analyst for a decade, Wolffe was Vice-President and Executive Editor of MSNBC.com, launching the channel’s website and app in 2013 and its streaming video channel in 2014. He grew MSNBC’s digital audience and revenues more than ten-fold in less than two years, winning a series of editorial, design and social impact awards.

After leaving MSNBC, he wrote a regular column for The Guardian, focusing on U.S. politics, through the first Trump term.

Wolffe was previously Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Digital Officer at Global Citizen, a non-profit social action platform that stages tentpole rock and pop concerts. In two years at Global Citizen, Wolffe grew its monthly audience twenty-fold to 40 million, more than doubled its registered users, and drove a ten-fold increase in political actions.Wolffe covered the entire length of Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign for Newsweek magazine. His book about the Obama campaign, Renegade: The Making Of A President, was published by Crown in 2009 and became an instant New York Times bestseller. It was internationally published in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, the Netherlands, and China.

His next book was Revival: The Struggle For Survival Inside The Obama White House, which was published by Crown in 2010. His book about the 2012 presidential campaign, The Message: The Re-Selling of President Obama, was published by Twelve in 2013.

Wolffe began writing about American politics as a senior journalist at the Financial Times, serving as its deputy bureau chief and U.S. diplomatic correspondent in Washington D.C. In that capacity, he managed coverage of business and political affairs in the nation’s capital, and reported on U.S. foreign policy at the State Department and National Security Council.

He first started reporting on George W. Bush and his Texas team in 1999, at the start of the presidential campaign. He travelled with then-Governor Bush for more than a year, through the extraordinary election of 2000. His earlier work for the Financial Times included extensive coverage of the Microsoft antitrust trial and the Clinton administration’s plans to break up the company.

Wolffe spent eight years with the Financial Times, including four years in the United Kingdom. His journalism there included business reporting on the City of London and the manufacturing sector in the British heartland. In politics, he reported on the tumultuous period leading to Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997.

He joined Newsweek magazine in November 2002 as diplomatic correspondent, covering foreign policy and international affairs, before reporting as the magazine’s senior White House correspondent.

Wolffe is the co-author of The Victim’s Fortune (HarperCollins, 2002), which reveals the behind-the-scenes deals that led to billions of dollars in compensation to the Nazis’ victims in the late 1990s.

His next book was in an entirely different field. Along with chef José Andrés, Wolffe is the co-author of a Spanish cookbook, Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America, published in 2005 in the United States and Spain. Together, they co-wrote a follow-up cookbook, Made in Spain, published in 2008, along with a 26-part TV show for PBS television. In 2018, they published We Fed an Island: The True Story Of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time. It was an instant New York Times bestseller.

Born in Birmingham, England, Wolffe graduated from Oxford University with first-class honors in English and French. He now lives in New York City.