Maria Bartiromo was honored with the 2026 Horatio Alger Award on Friday night in Washington, D.C., recognizing a career built on rising through a field she once described as a “boy’s club.” The Fox Business host said the award fit her own journey, which began with an internship at and led to a broadcast career that put her on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Bartiromo, who hosts Fox Business’s Mornings with Maria and ’s Sunday Morning Futures, said she looks forward to helping the next generation of scholars pursue what they love. “I think my story is the American dream,” she said, telling young female journalists to own the job, learn it better than anyone and never be afraid of hard work.
The Horatio Alger Award is given to people who have achieved notable professional success while overcoming substantial obstacles, and Bartiromo’s path was central to the honor. She grew up in an Italian American family and worked in her father’s restaurant in New York before entering broadcasting, and in 1993 CNBC hired her as an on-air reporter. She went on to become the first person to report live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, a milestone that helped define her early career.
That history gave weight to her message on Friday. Bartiromo said there are no shortcuts, that journalists should study and know the content cold, and that integrity matters more than following the crowd. She said women often have to work harder to prove themselves, though she added there are plenty of opportunities for women and men alike.
Her remarks also drew a line between her past and her present. Bartiromo joined Fox Business in 2013 and now hosts three shows for the network, a run that has made her one of the best-known faces in business television. The bigger lesson, she said, was that resilience, integrity and belief in herself carried her through when others underestimated her.
For Bartiromo, the award was not just a salute to longevity. It was a public mark of a career built on persistence, and a statement that the same habits that carried her from a New York restaurant to live television still matter for the next generation trying to break in.
