Awards of Courage

Andrew Tobias

Honoring with Pride 2005 Honoree
 

Andrew Tobias is a best-selling financial writer, author of two influential memoirs, creator of successful finance software, and the first openly gay American to serve as an officer of a major political party.

The Funny Money Game, published when Tobias was 23, was his first book to gain national attention. After entering Harvard Business School, he continued writing on the side, publishing magazine pieces in New York Magazine and then, upon graduation, going to work full-time as a contributing editor. For several years Tobias wrote a column for Time, and for two decades he has appeared frequently in Parade. His work, praised for its “trademark brevity and ingenuity” (Amazon.com), has also been published in such places as The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Esquire, Money, and Worth.

Three of Tobias’s books have been New York Times best sellers: The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, which has sold over a million copies, The Invisible Bankers (about the insurance industry), and Fire and Ice, the story of Charles Revson.

In 1973, Tobias published The Best Little Boy in the World, a coming-of-age story that is recognized as one of the major gay memoirs of the late twentieth century. Writing under the name of John Reid, he created a book The New York Times called “uniquely frank...splendid...One reads this utterly honest account with the shock of recognition.” The book was reprinted by the Modern Library in 1998, the same year a sequel, The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up, was published.

In addition to his writing, Tobias is known for the financial software he pioneered, Managing Your Money, which for a time dominated the personal finance category. With Jane Bryant Quinn he co-hosted “Beyond Wall Street,” an eight-part 1997 PBS documentary. He has appeared on such shows as “Today,” “Tonight,” “Tomorrow,” “Good Morning America,” “Face the Nation,” and “The MacNeil-Lehrer Report.”

A graduate of Harvard and Harvard Business School, he has received the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, Harvard Magazine’s Smith-Weld Prize, and the Consumer Federation of America Media Service Award. Tobias recently completed his sixth year on the board of the Human Rights Campaign. He lives in Miami and New York with his partner of 10 years, Charles Nolan.