Background and career
Andrew Yang (born January 13, 1975) is an American businessman, lobbyist and political commentator. He founded the political party and action committee Forward Party in 2021, for which he serves as co-chair alongside former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman and Michael S. Willner. The son of Taiwanese American immigrants, Yang was born and raised in New York state. He graduated from Brown University and Columbia Law School, and was a lawyer and entrepreneur before being a candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries. His signature policy, a monthly universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000, was intended to offset job displacement by automation. Media outlets described Yang as both a dark horse and a novelty candidate during the 2020 election cycle, rising from relatively unknown to a major competitor in the race. Yang qualified for and participated in seven of the first eight Democratic debates. His supporters, colloquially known as the "Yang Gang", included several high-profile public figures and celebrities. Yang suspended his campaign on February 11, 2020, shortly after the New Hampshire primary. Afterward, he joined CNN as a political commentator, created the political nonprofit organization Humanity Forward, and unsuccessfully ran for mayor of New York City in the 2021 Democratic primaries. On October 4, 2021, Andrew Yang left the Democratic Party to become an independent politician, faulting what he characterized as a system stuck in increasing polarization, saying that he is "more comfortable trying to fix the system than being a part of it". Later in October 2021, Yang founded the Forward Party, a centrist political party with a stated goal of providing an alternative to the two major U.S. political parties.
Andrew Yang was born on January 13, 1975, to a Taiwanese American family in Schenectady, New York. His parents emigrated from Taiwan to the United States in the 1960s and met in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. Yang is of Hoklo Taiwanese descent. His father graduated with a PhD in physics and worked in the research labs of IBM and General Electric, generating over 50 patents in his career. His mother graduated with a master's degree in statistics before becoming a systems administrator at a university, and later an artist. Yang has an older brother, Lawrence, who is a psychology professor at New York University. Yang grew up in Somers, a town in Westchester County, New York. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, a private boarding school in Exeter, New Hampshire. Yang was part of the 1992 U.S. national debate team, which competed at the world championships in London. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1992. Yang received a Bachelor of Arts degree (with a major in economics and political science) from Brown University in 1996 and a Juris Doctor degree from Columbia University in 1999. He was an editor of the Columbia Law Review when he was a law student.
After graduating from law school, Yang began his career as a corporate attorney at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York City. Yang later described the job as "a pie-eating contest, and if you won, your prize was more pie". He left the law firm after five months, which he has called "the five worst months of my life". In February 2000, Yang joined his office mate, Jonathan Philips, in launching Stargiving, a website for celebrity-affiliated philanthropic fundraising. The startup had some initial success, but folded in 2002 as the dot-com bubble burst. Yang became involved in other ventures, including a party-organizing business. From 2002 to 2005, he served as the vice president of a healthcare startup.
After working in the healthcare industry for four years, Yang left MMF Systems to join his friend Zeke Vanderhoek at a small test preparation company, Manhattan Prep. In 2006, Vanderhoek asked Yang to take over as CEO. While Yang was CEO, the company primarily provided GMAT test preparation. It expanded from five to 69 locations and was acquired by Kaplan, Inc. in December 2009. Yang resigned as the company's president in early 2012. Yang later said it was during his time at Manhattan Prep that he became a millionaire. In September 2019 testimony before the New York City Commission on Gender Equity, former employee Kimberly Watkins testified that Yang had fired her because he felt that she would not work as hard after getting married. Yang has denied the allegations. In an appearance on The View, Yang said, "I've had so many phenomenal women leaders that have elevated me and my organizations at every phase of my career, and if I was that kind of person I would never have had any success." In November, a former employee of Yang's at Manhattan GMAT filed a lawsuit against him for allegedly paying her less than her male co-workers and subsequently firing her for asking for a raise. Yang and another female employee at the company disputed the anonymous woman's claim that she was in an equivalent position to the male co-workers she cited.
Following Kaplan's acquisition of Manhattan Prep in late 2009, Yang began to work on creating a new nonprofit fellowship program, Venture for America (VFA), which he founded in 2011. The organization was intended to find and train entrepreneurs to start businesses in economically stressed cities. VFA was launched with $200,000 and trained 40 graduates in 2012 and 69 in 2013. VFA added Columbus, Miami, San Antonio, and St. Louis in 2014, with a class of 106.
VFA quickly received national attention, including from the Obama administration. In 2011, Yang was recognized by "Champions of Change", a White House program that honored 500 people from every state for extraordinary work in their communities. In 2015, Yang was named a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. VFA has also been criticized for falling far short of its 100,000 job goal. An ABC News investigation found that VFA's own tally counted only 365 jobs created as of 2020 and of those The New York Times has found only 150 remain. Startup, a documentary film co-directed by Cynthia Wade and Cheryl Miller Houser about six startups in Detroit launched through VFA, was released in 2016. Yang stepped down from his position as CEO of VFA in March 2017 but continued to advise startups aligned with his signature policy of universal basic income during his presidential campaign.
