William Russell Geist[1] (born May 3, 1975)[2][3] is an American television personality and journalist. He is co-anchor of MSNBC's Morning Joe and anchor of Sunday Today with Willie Geist. Geist also frequently serves as a fill-in anchor on both the weekday edition and the Saturday edition of Today. Geist is a correspondent for NBC News and NBC Sports, hosting and contributing to NBC's Olympic coverage. Geist has hosted the Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks and Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting on NBC.
Geist is the author or co-author of two books that have appeared on The New York Times bestseller list: Good Talk, Dad—written in 2014 with his father Bill Geist[4]—and American Freak Show: The Completely Fabricated Stories of Our New National Treasures, released in 2010. His third book, the self-help satire Loaded! Become a Millionaire Overnight and Lose 20 Pounds in 2 Weeks or Your Money Back!, was released in 2011.
Geist began substituting as a co-host on MSNBC's 6–9 a.m. morning time slot almost immediately after Don Imus was fired in late April 2007. He was named permanent co-host of Morning Joe, along with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, in September 2007. In late July 2009, Geist began hosting his own 30-minute program, Way Too Early with Willie Geist, which aired at 5:30 a.m. immediately before Morning Joe on MSNBC.[8] In 2010, he began substituting for Matt Lauer as host of the Today Show and as the show's newsreader. In 2012, Geist became an official co-host of Today and left Way Too Early. In 2016, he was made solo-host of the new Sunday Today that launched in April.[9] Geist has contributed to NBC Sports and NBC News's coverage of every Olympic Games since 2010.
Geist solo anchored NBC's hours-long coverage of the Orlando nightclub shooting on the morning of June 12, 2016. He was on the air for seven successive hours in an NBC News Special Report that aired across the United States.[10] Geist and Sunday TODAY earned the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for similar coverage on August 4, 2019, the morning after mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.[11]
In addition to his political interviews on Morning Joe during the week, Geist has earned a reputation on Sunday TODAY as a well-regarded long-form profile interviewer.
Geist hosts the popular Sunday Sitdown podcast, which features the full-length, unedited versions of his Sunday TODAY television profile interviews.
Geist did voice work in Kung Fu Panda 3, voicing Sum opposite Al Roker's Dim,[12] and has made cameos in several other movies and television shows.
Geist also is a board member at Operation Mend, an organization at UCLA Medical Center that provides free surgery and care to America's most severely injured military veterans.
On November 7, 2021, Geist ran the 50th annual New York City Marathon to raise money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation. He finished his first marathon in 3:58:23 and raised more than $500,000 for Parkinson's Disease research, entirely in small donations. Geist ran part of the race carrying a friend's engagement ring and handed it to him along the course in Central Park, where his friend then proposed.