Erik Sorenson is an equity partner and Chief Operating Officer of Sucherman Consulting Group. Sorenson has been involved in every aspect of the media business, from development to production to management, making him a valuable partner both for the firm’s clients and for the management of the company’s day-to-day operations. His experience spans radio, local and broadcast television, cable and syndicated television and digital media. He is widely regarded as an expert on media strategy, industry trends and management best practices.
As a writer, producer and television executive, Sorenson has won more than twenty Emmy awards and a Peabody, among many others. After starting out in radio, Sorenson began his local television career in 1977, became the youngest major market news director (at age 28) and later rose to the level of Station Manager at KCBS-TV in 1987. Two years later, CBS moved Sorenson to New York as Executive Producer of CBS This Morning and by 1991 he was named Executive Producer of The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. Sorenson went on to create and produce a syndicated program for Group W and CBS (Day & Date) and served as EVP, Programming for Court TV (then a joint venture of Time-Warner, NBC and Liberty Media.)
In 1998, Sorenson was named President and GM of MSNBC, the 24-hour cable news joint venture between GE and Microsoft. For six years, Sorenson managed a staff of more than 500 and led the channel during the Kosovo War, the Bush-Gore 2000 Election, the 9/11 attacks, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Sorenson also served on the joint venture board of msnbc.com, then the leading general news site in the United States. After leaving NBC in 2004, Sorenson formed a production company and for three years was CEO of Triple Threat Television which produced programs for ESPN, TLC, MTV and CNBC. In October 2007, Sorenson was named CEO of Vault.com and charged with growing the website and on-line business into a global, cross-platform leader within the highly competitive career space. In January 2010, Sorenson became non-executive Chairman of Vault.com’s Board of Directors.
Mr. Sorenson earned his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and also attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Sorenson attended one year of law school before devoting himself full-time to his television career and he was awarded an executive black belt in Six Sigma business management strategy from GE in 2003. He is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Children’s Aid and Family Services of New Jersey and serves on the President’s Council of the Valley Hospital Healthcare System.