Ken Kurson

Kurson was the son of a traveling salesman of motorcycle parts, and once recounted that "some years were good; others we had to sell our piano and all our furniture." He graduated from Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Illinois, in 1986, and is the younger brother of bestselling author Robert Kurson. Though he began studies at the University of Chicago, he wound up leaving college, finding the experience to be "soul-deadening."

Early career

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kurson played bass for the Chicago punk rock band Green. After leaving Green in 1990, Kurson founded The Lilacs with David Levinsky.

A debut EP, The Lilacs Love You, was produced by Material Issue frontman Jim Ellison, who is also credited with naming the band The Lilacs. A follow-up EP, The Lilacs Hate You, was the band's next release. A full-length CD, The Lilacs Rise Above the Filth, was produced by Brad Wood and released in 1992.

In 1993, he headed to New York to break into journalism, and landed internships and jobs at Rolling Stone, Harper's and Worth. In 1995, he began an irreverent eight-page publication on financial topics, The Kenny Quarterly, while working as an editor at United Media. It was to friends desiring financial advice. Later that year, he and a friend, John Packel, turned The Kenny Quarterly into Green. It was acquired by Bankrate in 1999. Kurson was a contributing editor at Esquire from 1997 to 2001, covering investing. Kurson first became interested in finance when he played bass for Green. He took charge of the band's books and contracts.

A New York Times profile in 2000 said that Kurson "has made personal finance palatable for people who might otherwise believe that it belongs on the shelf with Geritol and Dentu-Creme."

Doubleday published Kurson's first book, The Green Magazine Guide to Personal Finance in April 1998. He was co-author of a book with journalist David Faber published by Little, Brown in 2002.

Kurson lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, and is married to Melody Kurson.

Political consulting

From 2002 through the end of 2006, Kurson was Deputy Director of Communications for Giuliani Partners, the consulting company founded by Rudy Giuliani, with whom he had co-authored the book, Leadership. Kurson served as chief operating officer (COO) during Rudy Giuliani's unsuccessful 2008 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Kurson hired by the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee and put in charge of the Mid-Atlantic Region – New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. In May 2007, he was promoted to chief operating officer, reporting to Michael DuHaime, and served in this role until Giuliani withdrew from the race on January 30, 2008.

After the campaign, Kurson worked at Jamestown Associates, a Republican political consulting firm based in New Jersey.

Kurson ran in the 2003 New Jersey General Assembly election for the 34th Legislative District as a Republican. He received 17.6% of the vote and ran a distant third behind Democratic incumbent Peter C. Eagler (with 33.2%) and his running mate Sheila Oliver (31.0%).

In 2010 he was the co-author of the personal memoir of biotechnology executive John Crowley entitled Chasing Miracles: The Crowley Family Journey of Strength, Hope and Joy.

Federal harassment indictment

In March 2018, journalist Deborah Copaken wrote an article in The Atlantic in which she claimed that Kurson withdrew a job offer that had been made to her to write for the New York Observer after not responding favorably to sexual advances from him. Copaken also alleged that Kurson made a joke about her breasts at a lunch meeting during which they discussed an article she had written on her battle with breast cancer.

Kurson said he "categorically denied any claim of inappropriate behavior."

In May 2018, Kurson disclosed that he was under consideration for an unpaid position in the Trump Administration. It later became known that he was considered for an appointment to the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities. During an FBI background check, agents interviewed Copaken in June 2018. She told the agents that she had been contacted by a female Mount Sinai Hospital physician who alleged in 2015 that Kurson had harassed her. The FBI contacted Mount Sinai and interviewed the doctor and other employees about Kurson. When the list of appointees to the endowment was released in July 2018, Kurson was not on the list. He said at the time that he had withdrawn from consideration the previous month due to too much paperwork in the vetting process.

In October 2020, federal prosecutors unsealed a criminal complaint charging him with interstate cyberstalking and harassment of the doctor. According to the federal prosecutors, Kurson used aliases to post a flood of negative Yelp reviews about the physician, sent her threatening emails, harassed her with anonymous calls, and delivered messages to other Mount Sinai employees claiming the physician was having an affair with her boss. Mount Sinai Hospital was so concerned about the harassment at the time that it hired someone to protect the doctor for a few days.