The Observer Top 100 Influential People in New York

From Marc Jacobs and Jon Stewart, to Henry Kravis, Lorne Michaels, and Lauren Santo Domingo - The Observer shares its top influential people in NYC.

How is this determined?

Every year The Observer comes out with its Top 100 Influential People in New York. There are currently more than 8 million people living in New York City, so making the top 100 is pretty impressive. In order to determine who they would pick, the Observer asked these questions:

Did this person move the needle somehow?

Is there something of significance that he or she changed? The results were split up into 11 different categories. It include Art, Business, Entertainment, City Life, Media, Fashion, Society, Real Estate, Spirit of the City, Sports, and Tech-VC.

Art Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is one of the best-known photographers on the planet. Her photographsin which she often uses herself as subjecthave upended the way we see art history, the way men see women, the way women see themselves and the way we all see ourselves. Though she started as a painter at Buffalo State College, Ms. Sherman launched herself to stardom with her iconic self-portraiture. Since the 70s, she has photographed herself in an immense range of costumes, from Hollywood movie star to grotesque clown to Renaissance muse. For decades, her portraitswhich are currently on display in galleries across North America and Europehave explored and challenged the roles women play in contemporary society and throughout history. By acting as both subject and photographer, Ms. Sherman has demonstrated womens capacity to forge their own identities and define their place in society on their own terms.

Business Henry Kravis

In the same year The New York Observer was getting going, a slightly bigger deal was in the works. The management of RJR Nabisco was trying to take the cigarette maker private and was offering a stunning fortune to do so. Henry Kravis offered more. Kravis won, and a legend was born. With mentor Jerome Kohlberg and cousin George Roberts, Mr. Kravis was a pioneer of bootstrap capitalism, using a companys assets and debt capacity to acquire it with little equity. KKRs leveraged buyouts of Beatrice, Kraft and other giant corporations defined the restructuring of American consumers most familiar brand names: Tropicana, Samsonite, Safeway, Salem, Winston, Oreo, Ritz, Snickers, MacMillan, Fleet Bank and many others. As if remaking how M&A are transacted isnt enough, Mr. Kravis is a leading philanthropist as well as an astute collector of art. Along with his wife, Marie-Jose, he has been a tremendous supporter of New York institutions. He is a board member and a multimillion-dollar contributor to Mount Sinai Hospital and Columbia Graduate School of Business. He also started the nonprofit New York City Investment Fund and is on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York City Ballet.

Entertainment - Lorne Michaels

Who would have thought a kid from Toronto would go on to become the most important man in the history of American comedy? In 1975, NBC invited a 30-year-old comedy writer named Lorne Michaels to pitch a show to accomplish the minor feat of giving Johnny Carson Tonight reruns a rest at 11:30 p.m. on Saturdays. Appealing to younger audiences would be a plus. From this seed, Michaels gave birth to a late-night sketch show initially called NBCs Saturday Night. (After a Howard Cosell-hosted variety show with a similar name tanked, Mr. Michaelss show became Saturday Night Live.) SNL introduced the world to the original cast of The Not Ready for Prime-Time Players, including Chevy Chase, Dan Ackroyd, John Belushi and Gilda Radner. All became comedic icons. His show, which has remained firmly under his creative control for nearly 40 yearssave a brief blip in the early 80swould go on to redefine latenight television, create a national comedic institution and remake American comedy. Most remarkably, SNL accomplished the impossible feat of making it cool to stay in on Saturday nights. Over the years, SNLs supremacy would establish New York as the definitive comedians mecca. Even as Mr. Michaels conducted frequent talent raids in Chicago, L.A. and Toronto and at The Harvard Lampoon, the talent thrived and grew in the SNL environment. His impeccable eye for potential would only grow more acute as the years went on, with the show launching the careers of some of the biggest stars of our time from Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers to Will Ferrell and Tina Feyand spawning numerous TV shows and films, from Waynes World to 30 Rock.

Fashion - Marc Jacobs

Marc Jacobs, the brash enfant terrible of high fashion, cant seem to do anything without making a splash. Since he became creative director of luxury French fashion house Louis Vuitton, he has strengthened its business, breathing life into the formerly stuffy leather goods company with a now-iconic collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. His own lines, Marc Jacobs and Marc by Marc Jacobs, have become a wardrobe staple for millions of women (try to walk a Manhattan mile without spotting one of his trademark workwear bags). His retail mecca on Bleecker Street, which he runs with his partner, Robert Duffy, has transformed Greenwich Village, turning the neighborhood into a fashion haven. Add to this his activism on issues from AIDS to skin cancerwho can forget those T-shirts featuring naked celebrities?and it becomes readily apparent that Mr. Jacobs is a whole lot more than just the name on your bag.

Media - Jon Stewart

Its time to face facts: Jon Stewart will probably never run for public office . As he often points out, his job is to tell jokes, often silly ones, on a network that also features a show with talking poop. But the very fact that he needs to remind us of this shows the significance of his extraordinary career in fake news. Yes, Jon Stewart is a comedian. But he has forever changed the very nature of comedy: what we think it is, and particularly what we think it can do. He took a flagging satire of news shows on an obscure network and transformed it into one of our primary platforms for speaking truth to power. Born Jon Leibowitz in 1962, Mr. Stewart became one of the fresh faces on the stand-up circuit in the 90s. His stint on The Larry Sanders Show and a few brief but memorable turns in television and film introduced Mr. Stewart to comedy audiences, but he really made his mark after taking over the faltering Daily Show from Craig Kilborn. Mr. Stewart was instrumental in changing the format and focus of the show, encouraging his correspondents (including Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell and Ed Helms) to take a political stance and let their opinions inspire their comedy. In so doing, Mr. Stewart and his multiple-Emmy-winning staff not only created the most biting satire of American politics in television history, they invented a new way of informing the public about the issues. Studies show that not only do many young Americans get much of their news from The Daily Show, but that the shows content is as substantive as that of serious news programs.

Society Lauren Santo Domingo

Lauren Santo Domingo is giving the jobyes, job because she makes it payof socialite in New York City some 21st-century updates. Sure, shes got icy-blond good looks, a millionaire upbringing and a billion-heir husband, but shes also managed to make bank on something shes an expert at: exclusivity. In 2011, Ms. Santo Domingo co-founded Moda Operandi, a fashion startup that allows members to pre-order looks straight off the runway, months before they hit stores. Public-embarrassment- and reality-show-free, Ms. Santo Domingo (with credit to her PR past) has also managed to bring Gilded Age respectability back to the Manhattan socialite moniker while still embracing (and properly using) social media platforms. Ms. Santo Domingo is a pro at keeping it classy, and her hydrogen peroxide-sharp tweets (followed by 58,000 users) and envy-inducing Instagram feed prove shes a socialite for the digital age.

Tech-VC David Karp

When David Karp was 14, his parents recognized that Bronx Science could not keep up with him and introduced him to the animation producer Fred Siebert, with whom he interned. Mr. Karp moved on to work as the chief technology officer for UrbanBaby, an Internet forum for parents, and in February 2007, he founded his own company. It provided a platform for the rapid-fire posting of text, photos, quotes, links, music and videos. It was designed to make blogging and informationsharing easier. The program was called Tumblr, which, at the moment, employs 164 people and contains 96 million blogs and 44.3 billion posts. Mr. Karp, who was included in this years Forbes 30 under 30 list, has made a good sum of moneyhe purchased a condo in Williamsburg for $1.6 million last year, and his net worth is greater than $200 millionbut hes still figuring out how to monetize his website with meaningful modes of advertising. He dismisses the revenue models of Twitter and Facebook, with their little blue links, as he calls them. However Mr. Karps ambitions play out, the insignia on Tumblrs About page keeps the company grounded: Made in NY.

Complete List
Arts Cindy Sherman Andy Warhol Larry Gagosian Glenn Lowry Agnes Gund Jeff Koons Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith Marina Abramovic James Levine Business George Soros James Dimon Carl Icahn Ronald Perelman Michael Steinhardt Paul Singer Henry Kravis Bernard Madoff Kenneth Chenault Henry Kravis Bernard Madoff Kenneth Chenault Laurence Fink Stephen Schwarzman City Life Carrie Bradshaw Danny Meyer Ian Schrager Mario Batali David Chang Julian Niccolini Entertainment Jay-Z and Beyonc Cameron Mackintosh Peter Gelb Jerry Seinfeld Martin Scorsese Spike Lee Peter Gelb Jerry Seinfeld Martin Scorsese Spike Lee Madonna Woody Allen Scott Rudin Harvey and Bob Weinstein Robert De Niro Lorne Michaels Howard Stern Fashion Ralph Lauren Marc Jacobs Anna Wintour Jenna Lyons Michael Kors Terry Lungren Vera Wang Cathy Horyn Media Jon Stewart Strauss Zelnick Rupert Murdoch Joan Didion Helen Gurley Brown Regis Philbin Martha Stewart Tom Wolfe Mortimer Zuckerman David Letterman Tom Freston Nick Denton Roger Ailes Paula Scher Barbara Walters

Complete List
Jeffery Zucker Michiko Kakutani Politics Bill Clinton Rudolph Giuliani Cory Booker Andrew Cuomo Michael Bloomberg Hillary Clinton Charles Schumer Real Estate Jonathon (Jody) Durst Larry Silverstein Society Sports Tinsley Mortimer Derek Blasberg Lee Radziwill and Mercedes Bass Brook Astor C.Z. Guest Lauren Santo Domingo Spirit of the City Kenneth Lerer Shana Fisher Kevin Ryan David Karp Barry Diller Fred Wilson Brian Cashman Joe Torre Derek Jeter Eli Manning John Mara and Robert Wood Johnson IV Tech-VC Joel Klein Cardinal Timothy Dolan Masamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger

Stephen Ross, Jeff Blau,Howard Rubenstein and Bruce Beal Raymond Kelly Donald Trump Randi Weingarten Anthony Malkin Robert Hammond and Joshua Gary Barnett David Douglas Durst Al Sharpton

Source
All information and biographies in this power point came directly from: The Observer Top 100 Influential People