Alisyn Camerota is the co-anchor of CNN’s morning show New Day with Chris Cuomo. The 51-year-old moved to the network in July 2014 after 16 years at Fox News. She was among the Fox News personalities who accused the late Roger Ailes of sexual harassment.
Camerota was born in Shrewsbury, New Jersey and is married to Timothy Lewis. They have two daughters and a son, and live in Connecticut.
You can follow Camerota on Facebook and Instagram. She no longer has a public Twitter profile.
Here’s what you need to know about Camerota and her family.
1. Camerota Is Married to Investment Manager Timothy Lewis, Who Works at Southfield Capital
GettyNew Day co-anchors Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo.
Camerota’s husband is Timothy Lewis. A graduate of Northwestern and Yale with an MBA in Marketing, Lewis is an investment manager and partner at Southfield Capital. The firm is based in Greenwich, Connecticut and was hired in July 2014.
Lewis is “involved in all aspects of Southfield’s investment efforts, but will have a focus on the operational aspects of the firm’s investment strategy,” according to the firm’s 2014 statement on his hiring.
Before joining Southfield, he had stints as a partner at Atlantic Street Capital and CRG Partners. He also worked at RHC Spacemaster and The Keystone Group in Chicago.
Lewis, Camerota and their three children live in Westport, Connecticut. The New York Observer reported in August 2012 that they lost money when they sold their Upper West Side apartment in Manhattan. They bought it for $1.79 million in 2007, but sold it for $1.65 million in 2012.
2. Camerota Struggled With Infertility, but Is Now the Mother of 3 Children
In 2010, Alisyn Camerota began speaking out about her struggles with infertility. In a Self Magazine interview that year, Camerota discussed the problems she faced when she finally decided to have children.
“I bought an ovulation kit and realized that I wasn’t ovulating,” Camerota explained. “I went to the doctor, who said I had hypothalamic dysfunction. My hypothalamus wasn’t kicking my cycle into gear, so I wasn’t producing enough estrogen to ovulate or get my period. I would get my period very sporadically—several times a year—certainly not every 28 days.”
After trying various treatments, Camerota and Lewis opted for in vitro fertilization. She got pregnant twice, but unfortunately, both pregnancies ended in miscarriages. The fourth IVF cycle was a success. Her 12-year-old twins Francesca and Alessandra were born in 2005. She also has a 10-year-old son, Nathaniel.
Her pregnancy with Nathaniel was a complete surprise.
“This was a massive surprise. I was still keeping up the healthy changes, though I wasn’t as extreme about it. I woke up one morning and I could not button my pants,” Camerota told Self. “I was like ‘What is happening to me?’ I was worried I had a cyst or a tumor or something. I went to the doctor, who was like, ‘There is a big baby in here! You’re 16 weeks pregnant.'”
In 2011, Camerota appeared on The Today Show to explain why she decided to speak out. She believes women should seek out support groups to see they are not alone.
“Now I talk — and do whatever I can to raise awareness and to encourage anyone struggling to find a support group so that they can share their struggle with others who can relate,” Camerota wrote in 2011. “To find the closest group to you, go to Resolve.org. You don’t have to feel alone.”
3. Camerota Accused Roger Ailes of Sexually Harassing Her When She Was at Fox News
Camerota started her career in Boston and Washington D.C., where she worked with Ted Koppel and America’s Most Wanted. She later joined Fox News Channel and eventually rose up the ranks to co-host Fox & Friends. She stayed at FNC for 16 years until she went to CNN in 2014.
In April, Camerota told her CNN colleague Brian Stelter that former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes sexually harassed her, joining the growing ranks of women who accused him of sexual harassment. Ailes, who died in May, denied all allegations before his death.
“The time that I remember most was when I was first starting out at Fox and I was single, and I remember Roger, being in Roger’s office, and I was saying that I wanted more opportunity,” Camerota told Stelter. “He said ‘Well, I would have to work with you. I would have to work with you on that case. I would have to work with you really closely, and it may require us getting to know each other better, and that might have to happen away from here, and it might have to happen at a hotel. Do you know what I’m saying?’ And I said ‘Yeah, I think I do know what you’re saying.'”
At the time, Camerota didn’t tell anyone. “I was embarrassed, and it is sort of humiliating,” she said, adding that she thought she would be fired.
Camerota claimed she would often push back against Ailes when he tried to push a conservative viewpoint on the air. Near the end of her time at Fox, she refused to even go to his office.
In a new interview with Working Mother, Camerota said her children were always aware of the “problems” she had with her boss at Fox. Her daughters were proud of their mother when she told her story publicly, she told the magazine.
4. Camerota Quit Twitter for Good in July & Was Personally Called Out by President Donald Trump in January 2016
Camerota was one of the many journalists berated by future President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. “New Day on CNN treats me very badly. @AlisynCamerota is a disaster. Not going to watch anymore,” Trump Wrote on January 2016. That tweet has been retweeted over 1,300 times.
While that tweet remains online, the Twitter account mentioned in it doesn’t. That’s because Camerota decided in July to quit the social network. New Day co-host Chris Cuomo still likes to use it, but she’s had enough. She even wrote a “break-up letter” posted at CNN.com.
“Something’s happened to you. You’re a shadow of your former self, the one I was first attracted to,” she wrote. “It’s no fun to be with you anymore. You’ve become mean and verbally abusive. In fact, you gross me out. You’re a cesspool of spleen-venting from people who think it’s acceptable to insult other people in public and anonymously.”
She later continued, “I’m looking for something else, something real and lasting. Something that involves actual people, not nearly 48 million bots. I prefer my real friends over fake humanoids run by computers and true trolls filled with genuine venom. Call me old fashioned, but I like hearing viewers’ real thoughts, not the ones special interest groups pay them to tweet.”
After her kids read the letter, they said they were happy about her decision. “They went over to our shared iPad and sat at the kitchen table. My daughter said, ‘Mom, this is great.’ I’ve always known my kids are interested in my career choices. They offer insight on how I should approach things,” Camerota told Working Mother.
5. Camerota Wrote the Novel ‘Amanda Wakes Up’ Based on Her Experience in Journalism
In July 2017, Camerota published her novel Amanda Wakes Up, which centers on the life of Amanda Gallo, a fictional journalist at the FAIR News network with a great job and personal life. However, it all comes crashing down when her journalistic ideals are threatened when a TV star-turned-politician named Victor Fluke arrives and her personal life falls apart.
“There’s a lot of Alisyn in Amanda,” Camerota told the New York Times in July. “What’s different is, she kind of has her arc, her learning curve, and her wake-up, over the course of a year and a half. Mine was 25 years.”
Camerota said the book wasn’t exclusively based on her time at Fox News. However, she told the Times that she hopes it might help liberals understand that not all journalists at Fox News deserved to be put in a “partisan box.”
“‘Oh, you work at Fox News, so you’re obviously an archconservative.’ No, I’m a journalist, and I’m trying to cover the news,” she said.
