Fox and Friends co-host (2005–2013) Gretchen Elizabeth Carlson (born June 21, 1966[2]) is an American broadcast journalist, writer, and television personality.

In July 2016, Carlson filed a lawsuit against then Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, claiming sexual harassment.

[9] She has written two books, her memoir Getting Real, and the New York Times bestseller Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back.

[1] Her father studied business at Gustavus Adolphus College and later became owner/operator of Main Motor Sales, an automobile dealership started by her grandfather in 1919.

[citation needed] Carlson planned to attend law school after Stanford and completed the LSAT exam, but instead focused on a career in broadcast journalism.

[citation needed] A year after becoming Miss America in 1989, Carlson secured a role on WRIC-TV, an ABC-affiliated television station serving Richmond, Virginia as a co-anchor on the network and political commentator.

In 2013, Carlson admitted on Brian Kilmeade's radio show that Fox News female anchors were not allowed to wear pants.

[23] She began covering stories that supported women's rights, including a piece on Robin Wright of the Netflix series House of Cards demanding the same salary as Kevin Spacey.

[citation needed] On January 1, 2018, Carlson was elected chairwoman of the board of directors of the Miss America Organization, a volunteer position.

[24] Shortly after joining as chairwoman, Carlson's first major decision was to remove the swimsuit competition from the pageant, following a unanimous vote from the board of directors.

Gretchen Carlson: Breaking the Silence focuses on the every woman story of workplace sexual harassment and premiered on Lifetime on January 14, 2019.

Carlson produced her episode with Norman Lear, titled "Washington's War on Women", about sexual harassment on Capitol Hill.

[citation needed] In December 2019, Carlson wrote an opinion article in The New York Times, stating that she still cannot disclose what happened to her due to a nondisclosure agreement, but that it was her desire to be able to do so.

[citation needed] In April 2021, Carlson and her life story was featured on the PBS television program Finding Your Roots in order to explore her family genealogy.

[35] With one bold legal filing, Carlson exposed Ailes's predatory tactics, dragged Fox News into the twenty-first century, affected Trump's presidential race, and lit the match that led to the modern-day #MeToo movement.

[39] Shortly thereafter, Carlson sat down for an interview with John Koblin of The New York Times, saying, "I wanted to stand up for other women who may be facing similar circumstances.

"[40] As the case progressed, Carlson reached out directly to her fans, thanking them in a series of Twitter videos[41][42] and offering her support for fellow victims of sexual harassment.

Carlson created the Gift of Courage Fund in 2017 and partnered with the nonprofit organization All In Together to create the Gretchen Carlson Leadership Initiative, (GCLI) a program meant to "bring civic leadership and advocacy training to thousands of underserved women across the country, with a special focus on empowering women who have experienced gender-based violence, discrimination, or harassment.

[51] More recently, Carlson created the non-profit organization Lift Our Voices with the mission of eradicating arbitration clauses in employment contracts and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that serve to silence women and men in the workplace.

In July 2020, Carlson headlined a panel with Bethenny Frankel on how global emergencies affect philanthropic priorities for Town & Country's 2020 Philanthropy Summit.

The initiative focuses on NDA's solely dealing with toxic workplace environment issues like sexual harassment, not those protecting trade secrets.

[6][7] In November 2020, lawsuits discovered by Business Insider found that multiple women had stated in legal filings that Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and presidential candidate, fostered a toxic, fraternity-like culture at his company during the 1990s.

[54] Soon thereafter, Carlson's organization wrote an op-ed in The Des Moines Register encouraging the debate moderators in Iowa to ask the Democratic presidential candidates about their stance on NDAs.

[56] In 2021, Carlson and Roginsky, along with Cher Scarlett, a labor activist in tech, wrote an essay for The Olympian encouraging Washington State Legislature to pass a bill Scarlett had worked with on with House Representative Liz Berry and Senator Karen Keiser to expand protections for workers facing unlawful conduct in the workplace, disallowing employers from enforcing NDAs in cases of discrimination, assault, and harassment.

[63] Bombshell, a film portraying Roger Ailes's sexual harassment of the talent while Carlson was at Fox News, was released on December 13, 2019.

Carlson is played by Nicole Kidman, with other cast members including Margot Robbie as Kayla Pospisil (a composite character), Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly, and John Lithgow as Roger Ailes.

As a string instrumentalist in her youth, Carlson had admired cellist Yo-Yo Ma, whom she eventually met when they both spoke at the 2019 Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco.