Anderson Cooper was born on June 3, 1967, into an incredibly wealthy family on the east side of New York City. His mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, is a part of the Vanderbilt dynasty and from an early age cast a shadow over Anderson Cooper’s life. With a desire to escape the Vanderbilt’s shadow, Cooper went off to Africa after he graduated from Dalton School and went on a long “survival trip” which he barely escaped alive. Afterward, he enrolled at Yale University. He studied political science, eventually earning his BA in 1989.
Although he never had any formal education, Cooper loved journalism, and after a short internship at the Central Intelligence Agency, he decided to pursue a career in broadcast news. He forged a press pass and shipped himself off to Vietnam, where he learned the language and sold homemade news segments to Channel One News. He eventually caught the attention of ABC News, where he rose to become a co-anchor. He took a short hiatus to host a reality show but returned to reporting after the horrific attacks on September 11, 2001. He was hired at CNN and soon became a prime time anchor on the weekend news. He also got his own show in 2003, entitled Anderson Cooper 360°, where he took on projects of his choice. His show began to take off after 2005, with Copper covering Tsunamis, famines, wars, and even hurricanes all in the span of a single year. He eventually wrote a book about the events he covered in 2005, entitled Dispatches From the Edge.