Jeanine Emilia Cornillot Press kit

Jeanine Emilia Cornillot

Emmy and Ambie-winning showrunner and executive producer making television, podcasts, and original audio fiction, and developing original IP with AI and emerging technologies at Ghost Mode Labs.

Short bio

Jeanine Emilia Cornillot is an Emmy and Ambie-winning showrunner and executive producer, and the founder of Ghost Mode Labs, where she develops original IP and builds prototypes that use AI and other emerging technologies to research, develop, and extend stories. She has made more than 300 episodes of television and podcasts, created and showran Scamfluencers and The Last City, co-developed and produced Dying for Sex, and was a supervising producer on the Emmy-winning Born This Way. She is also the author of Family Sentence.

Selected work

  • Scamfluencers

    Creator and showrunner

    The series has 53 million downloads, reached #1 on Apple Podcasts, and won the 2023 Ambie for Best Entertainment Podcast, with a second nomination in 2025.

  • Dying for Sex

    Co-developer and producer of the original podcast

    The original podcast won the 2021 Ambie for Podcast of the Year. Its FX television adaptation won a Peabody Award, received nine Emmy nominations, and received a 2026 Television Academy Honor.

  • The Last City

    Creator and showrunner

    Wondery’s first original series designed natively in Dolby Atmos, with sound shaping the story from the pitch and writers’ room onward. The 12-part climate thriller stars Rhea Seehorn, reached #1 in Apple Fiction in 20 countries, and was nominated for the 2025 Ambie for Best Fiction Podcast.

  • Born This Way

    Supervising producer

    The series won three Primetime Emmys and received 16 nominations.

  • No Passport Required

    Supervising producer

    The Vox Media and PBS series won a James Beard Media Award.

  • Visual Audiobooks

    Creator & Creative Director

    Built a prototype audiobook player whose artwork redraws itself each time a listener returns.

Author

Family Sentence

The Search for My Cuban-Revolutionary, Prison-Yard, Mythic-Hero, Deadbeat Dad

Family Sentence, a memoir by Jeanine Emilia Cornillot published by Beacon Press, grew out of her audio documentary of the same name, produced at Transom with Viki Merrick and Jay Allison.

Beacon Press

Publishers Weekly“Top 20” Fall Book Selection

Praise for the book

“Finalmente! As incisive as she is lyrical, funny as she is profound, Cornillot dislodges the bolero-and-palm-tree nostalgia associated with Cuban American identity, and asserts claim to a new and very real history.”
H. G. CarrilloAuthor of Loosing My Espanish
“Adds to the ever-growing jigsaw puzzle that is the Cuban American experience with verve and charm.”
Oscar HijuelosPulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
“A charming, often sorrowful study of learning to let go of a myth and love a person.”
Kirkus ReviewsIndependent review

Available to discuss

  • Creating and showrunning podcasts, from nonfiction to scripted fiction
  • Turning research and reporting into character-driven series
  • Moving stories between audio, television, and new formats
  • Leading creative teams and innovation programs
  • Writing memoir from family mythology and cultural inheritance
  • AI and emerging technologies in creative production

Full bio

Jeanine Emilia Cornillot is an Emmy and Ambie-winning showrunner and executive producer who has made more than 300 episodes of television and podcasts. Her work ranges from unscripted television and narrative nonfiction to true crime and original audio fiction.

She created and showran Scamfluencers and The Last City and co-developed and produced Dying for Sex, all for Wondery and Amazon. Her television credits include A&E’s Born This Way, which won three Primetime Emmys, and Vox Media and PBS’s No Passport Required, a James Beard Media Award winner.

Cornillot is also the author of Family Sentence, a funny and unsentimental memoir of a Cuban American girlhood lived between cultures and in the shadow of a father’s incarceration.

At Wondery, she founded the company’s first AI Creator Lab and grew participation from four people to more than fifty across the company. Through Ghost Mode Labs, she now develops original IP and prototypes new ways to use AI and other emerging technologies in story research, development, and extension.

Awards and recognition

  • Primetime Emmy Awards, Three wins for Born This Way
  • Ambie, Podcast of the Year 2021, Dying for Sex
  • Ambie, Best Entertainment Podcast 2023, Scamfluencers
  • James Beard Media Award, No Passport Required
  • Ambie nomination, Best Fiction Podcast 2025, The Last City
  • Ambie nomination, Best Entertainment Podcast 2025, Scamfluencers

Project artwork and additional production information are available on request.