Whitney Tilson

Whitney Tilson is the founder and CEO of Empire Financial Research, as well as the editor of the Empire Investment Report and Empire Stock Investor.

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in government in 1989. After college, he helped Wendy Kopp launch Teach for America and then spent two years as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1994, where he graduated in the top 5% of his class and was named a Baker Scholar.

Tilson spent much of his childhood in Tanzania and Nicaragua (his parents, both educators, were former Peace Corps volunteers who have since retired to Kenya). As a young child, he was part of the famed Stanford "marshmallow test." Prior to creating Empire Financial Research, Whitney Tilson founded and ran Kase Capital Management, which managed three value-oriented hedge funds and two mutual funds. Starting his bedroom with only $1 million, Tilson grew assets under management to more than $200 million.

An accomplished writer, Tilson recently published his fourth book, The Art of Playing Defense: How to Get Ahead by Not Falling Behind. He has also co-authored two books, The Art of Value Investing: How the World's Best Investors Beat the Market (2013) and More Mortgage Meltdown: 6 Ways to Profit in These Bad Times (2009) and was a contributor to Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger (2005), the definitive book on Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger.

He has also written for Forbes, the Financial Times, Kiplinger's, the Motley Fool, and TheStreet.com. He was featured in two 60 Minutes segments – one in December 2008 about the housing crisis, which won an Emmy, and another in March 2015 about Lumber Liquidators. Tilson has appeared dozens of times on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and Fox Business Network and has been profiled by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

In his spare time, Tilson is involved with several charities focused on education reform and Africa. For his philanthropic work, he received 2008, John C. Whitehead, Social Enterprise Award from the Harvard Business School Club of Greater New York. He is a member (and served as chairman) of the Manhattan chapter of the Young Presidents' Organization.

Tilson is an avid mountaineer, having climbed the Nose of El Capitan in June 2020 and summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Blanc, the Matterhorn, and the Eiger. He also regularly competes in obstacle course races and is the record holder in the 50+ age group at the 24-hour World’s Toughest Mudder, having completed 75 miles and nearly 300 obstacles in 2016. Tilson currently lives in Manhattan with his wife of 27 years, with whom he has three young adult daughters.