More Featured Old Boys

The benefits of a St. Bernard’s education can pop up at unexpected moments. A number of years ago, I was called upon to give a toast at a friend’s wedding. It had been over a decade since I had last spoken in front of a crowd and I was quite nervous, but taking the microphone was like putting on an old sweatshirt. No problem, I was just back giving a report on the varsity red soccer team’s recent match versus St. David’s, or reprising my role as the cow in “The Friendly Beasts” at Christmas Carols, or enunciating one of my seven endlessly rehearsed lines in the Shakespeare play. Familiar ground, nothing to fear.

After a decade as a Forbes senior editor, Zack O’Malley Greenburg '99 now covers the business of music at Substack, where he’s writing a twice-weekly newsletter and serializing his fifth book, We Are All Musicians Now (subscribe for free here). His other books include the Jay-Z biography Empire State of Mind (re-released by Penguin in 2021) and A-List Angels: How a Band of Actors, Artists and Athletes Hacked Silicon Valley (Little, Brown, 2020). Zack has also written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Vibe, Sports Illustrated, McSweeney's and the Library of Congress; he's been a source for BBC, NPR, and 60 Minutes, and a speaker at SXSW, CES, TEDx, Princeton, and Harvard.