1981 – New York City
Sylvia Porter became interested in finance during the market crash of 1929. She switched her major at Hunter College from English to economics and emerged from college at eighteen with every honor offered in that discipline. After graduating from Hunter in 1932, Ms. Porter found no demand for a woman financial writer, but her Phi Beta Kappa key won her a job with a highly unconventional firm of investment brokers. Still aiming at financial writing, she worked with other Wall Street firms and went on to graduate school. She finally began her career as a financial writer at the New York Post using the byline S.F. Porter. It was several years before the public became aware that the writer was a woman. Ms. Porter, regarded nationally as a champion of the consumer, influenced the way Americans spent their money. She was the only journalist invited to President Gerald Ford’s economic summer conference in the fall of 1974. Her awards and honors read like a Who’s Who (and What’s What) of journalism and economic/business accomplishment. She received the 1975 University of Missouri Honor Award for Distinguished Service in Journalism and the 1978 William Allen White Award for journalistic distinction. She was editor-in-chief of the monthly publication Sylvia Porter’s Personal Finance Magazine and the author of many books.
