Amber Ruffin

Amber Ruffin, born on January 9, 1979, in Omaha, Nebraska, graduated from Benson High School in 1996. Her career began in local theater and improv in Omaha in 2001. After receiving encouragement, she moved to Chicago for improv training at the iO Theater. In 2008, Ruffin moved to Amsterdam to work as a writer and performer for the improv comedy troupe Boom Chicago Amsterdam. Upon returning to the United States, she performed with The Second City in Denver and Chicago, where she met future writing partner Jenny Hagel. In 2011, she relocated to Los Angeles, joined the YouTube comedy group RobotDown, and appeared on “Key & Peele.” Ruffin was also a member of the sketch and musical comedy troupe Story Pirates and Sacred Fools Theater Company, performing in a serialized musical version of “King of Kong: A Musical Parody,” which won Best Overall Musical at the 2014 New York International Fringe Festival.

Ruffin’s career progressed significantly in 2014 when she became a writer for NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” after an audition for “Saturday Night Live.” This role marked her as the first African American female to write for a late-night network talk show in the U.S. Alongside her writing duties, Ruffin frequently appeared in segments like “Amber Says What?” and “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell.” She also contributed as a writer to Comedy Central’s “Detroiters” (2017-2018) and was a regular narrator on “Drunk History.” In 2019, she wrote for the first season of “A Black Lady Sketch Show” on HBO. Ruffin’s influence continued to grow, earning her a spot on the 2021 TIME100 Next List for the next 100 most influential people in the world.

In 2020, Ruffin launched “The Amber Ruffin Show” on Peacock, a late-night talk show that deviated from traditional formats by focusing on topical sketches without guests. The show received Emmy and WGA Award nominations for its writing. Expanding her creative output, Ruffin co-authored two New York Times bestselling books with her sister Lacey Lamar: “You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories of Racism” (2021) and “The World Record Book of Racist Stories” (2022). She also co-wrote the Broadway musical “Some Like it Hot,” which began performances in 2022 and earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical. In 2022, Ruffin and Jenny Hagel co-founded their production company, Straight to Cards, under an overall deal with Universal Television.