Who is Ronan Farrow? Everything You Need to Know

siblings: Bechet Allen, Daisy Previn, Fletcher Previn, Frankie-Minh Farrow, Isaiah Justus Farrow, Kaeli-Sha Farrow, Lark Previn, Manzie Tio Allen, Matthew Previn, Moses Farrow, Sascha Previn, Soon-Yi Previn, Tam Farrow, Thaddeus Wilk Farrow

City: New York City

U.S. State: New Yorkers

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education: Bard College, Bard College at Simon's Rock,Yale Law School, Magdalen College, Oxford

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Ronan Farrow is an American, journalist, human rights lawyer, and activist. Hailed as a child prodigy and boy genius, he went to Bard’s College in Simon’s Rock when he was just 11 years old and earned a degree at 15. He got an opportunity to study law at Yale Law School as a 16-year old teen, and soon after went to Oxford University to study international relations on a Rhodes scholarship. Ronan was an UNICEF spokesperson for eight years, helping in fundraising and campaigning for the rights of women and children unwittingly involved in the Darfur region of Sudan. He served as a foreign policy advisor under the first government of Barack Obama. He established the State Department’s ‘Office of Global Youth Issues’ after he was appointed as a ‘Special Advisor’ to Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State in the Obama administration. As a journalist, he has contributed to several mainstream newspapers including ‘The Wall Street Journal’, ‘The Los Angeles Times’, and ‘The New York Times’ on foreign policy matters and human rights. He has also hosted several shows and appeared as an expert commentator on popular TV networks. Ronan has won several awards, chiefly for his journalistic forays and as an activist, including the ‘Refugees International’s McCall-Pierpaoli Humanitarian Award’ and the ‘Cronkite Award’.

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Childhood & Early Life

Ronan was born on 19th December 1987, in New York City, to celebrity parents, Woody Allen, a renowned film director and producer, and actress Mia Farrow. He is the only biological offspring amongst all the issues of his parents.

Mia Farrow, once revealed in an interview to ‘Vanity Fair’ that Frank Sinatra, her ex-husband, could be Ronan’s father. Ronan’s two middle names ‘Satchel’ and ‘O’ Sullivan’ were adopted from Satchel Page, Hall of Fame baseball pitcher, and maternal grandmother Maureen O’Sullivan respectively.

In 1999, he took on the moniker ‘Seamus’ while studying biology and Latin at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Soon after, he started attending classes at Bard College, excelling in literature in his sophomore year. Elizabeth Frank, a biographer who taught literature, was hugely impressed by his writing skills.

Later on, he qualified to study at Yale Law School when he was just 16 and received his degree in 2009. He was granted a Rhodes scholarship in 2011 to conduct doctoral research in international relations at Oxford University. His law degree made him eligible to become a New York bar member.

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Career

Around the time he was at Yale Law School, he was appointed spokesman for Youth by UNICEF, and served in that position from 2001 to 2009. As a spokesperson, he visited Darfur in Sudan, advocating for the rights of women and children, unsuspectingly embroiled in the civil war.

Ronan also accompanied his mother, Mia Farrow, a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, on trips to Sudan’s Darfur region, to press for the security of Darfuri refugees. He was apprenticed to ‘Davis Pollock & Wardwell’ a law firm and at the office of United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs while he was at Yale.

He served as a ‘Special Adviser for Humanitarian and NGO affairs’ under the bureau of the ‘Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan’ in the Obama government from 2009. From 2009-11, he supervised the US Government’s rapport with NGOs and civil society in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Secretary of State in the Obama administration, Ms. Hillary Clinton, appointed Farrow as her Special Advisor and Director of Global Youth Issues under the State Department office. Hillary had appointed a multiyear grouping on an ad-hoc basis for assessing the country’s social and economic guidelines on youth issues and the bureau was instituted for streamlining the tasks.

Ronan was appointed as the co-chairman of the task force for global youth issues starting from 2010 along with David Barth, a veteran USAID (United States Agency for International Development). Ronan’s principal responsibility as a special advisor was to frame guidelines for youth programs with the overarching objective of making the young more proactive.

Farrow served as Special Advisor for 2 years from 2010 to 2012 and thereafter the onus of continuing with the policy framework fell upon the new incumbent.

After Ronan’s stint as an advisor in the federal government was over, he left for Oxford University armed with a Rhodes scholarship for carrying out doctoral research on international relations. However, he came to the US without completing the dissertation.

As a journalist, he has authored op-eds, essays, and reports for several newspapers and magazines. He has written pieces for ‘Los Angeles Times’, ‘The Wall Street Journal’, ‘The Guardian’, ‘Foreign Policy’ and ‘The Atlantic’ magazines.

Ronan Farrow completed writing a book, ‘Pandora’s Box: How American Military Aid Creates America’s Enemies’, in 2013 that was published by Penguin Press in 2015. Ronan presented a TV news series ‘Ronan Farrow Daily’ broadcasted on MSNBC from 2014 to 2015.

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He has also hosted many other TV programs and shows aired on NBC, including ‘Today Show’, ‘Morning Joe’, and ‘Nightly News’. Ronan had done a documentary on alleged sexual escapades of Harvey Weinstein, a movie producer which NBC ultimately did not telecast. Nevertheless, he wrote a detailed investigative report that was published by ‘The New Yorker’ in 2017.

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Awards & Honors

Ronan Farrow received the Refugees International’s McCall-PierPaoli Humanitarian Award in 2008 for his ‘extraordinary service to refugees and displaced people’.

In 2012, Forbes magazine in its section on “30 under 30” Most Influential People, placed him on the top in ‘Law and Policy’ category. Dominican University of California awarded him an honorary Doctorate in 2012.

He won the 3rd Cronkite Award from ‘Reach the World’ in 2014 for “Excellence in Exploration and Journalism”. The award was given to him for his contributions as an UNICEF Spokesperson for Youth since 2001.

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Personal Life

Mia Farrow along with Ronan and her other children, relocated to rural Connecticut, in Frog Hollow, her home after Woody Allen lost guardianship of the children in 1992.

Both Ronan and his mother are no longer on talking terms with Allen as he besmirched the family name by entering into an incestuous relationship with an adopted child of Mia Farrow. Mia Farrow and Woody Allen made a total of 13 films over a ten year period but never married.

Mia Farrow lived in New York’s Central Park with her 12 children—eight of whom were adopted from orphanages in faraway countries—and the rest biological.

Ronan Farrow has been in and out of relationships with numerous women till date. It was once reported that he had dated, Jemima Khan, daughter of James Goldsmith, an Anglo-French tycoon and politician, and ex-wife of the Pakistani cricketer, Imran Khan.

Ronan Farrow is rumored to have dated Tory Burch, an American businesswoman, and the two were spotted in public on numerous occasions. He also romanced Jon Lovett who used to be Obama Barack’s speechwriter.

Ronan Farrow Biography