(ABACAUSA.COM)
HAYWIRE: Critics blasted Cory Booker (far left) for giving a job at his Waywire start-up to teen Andrew Zucker, here in 2009 with CNN-boss dad Jeff and mom Caryn. Andrew resigned yesterday. (
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He isn’t even old enough to drive — but CNN President Jeff Zucker’s teenage son has already resigned from a cushy position at Cory Booker’s closely watched Internet start-up.
After somehow scoring a seat on the advisory board of the rising Democratic star’s Waywire video-sharing site, 15-year-old Andrew Zucker abruptly quit yesterday amid questions over his qualifications.
The rich kid’s consulting career as a “millennial adviser” ended just hours after it was revealed that he had been granted stock options in the firm co-founded by Booker, the Newark mayor who polls show is a shoo-in for the US Senate after a special election.
“Despite the fact that his affiliation with Waywire was extremely limited to only an advisory capacity, in order to avoid even the perception of a conflict, Jeff’s son has resigned from the Waywire advisory board, effective immediately,” CNN said in a statement.
News of Andrew’s stock deal lit up social media yesterday, with critics on Twitter branding it a “gross nepotism alert.”
Corporate-governance experts also called his hiring highly unusual, saying they’d never before heard of anyone so young getting such a cushy gig.
Advisory boards are usually stocked with “seasoned folks who have been through the process of making that kind of a start-up work, or enhancing the capacity of a company so it can move to an IPO [initial public offering] or the next level of business,” said Eleanor Bloxham, CEO of The Value Alliance. “So you’re not generally looking in the high-school age range.”
Another prominent expert said the arrangement “raises more questions than answers” about the relationship between Jeff Zucker and Booker — who is routinely covered by the CNN chief’s flagging cable network.
“It creates a conflict of interest,” the expert said.
Andrew, the eldest of Zucker’s four children with wife Caryn, previously made headlines in 2011, when his powerful pop threw him a lavish, $250,000 bar mitzvah at the Four Seasons featuring a performance by the rapper Drake.
A spokesman for Booker said the mayor was not involved in wooing the tech-savvy teen to the new company.
“The mayor never met with or talked to Andrew when he advised the company, and wasn’t involved in him joining Waywire,” said Kevin Griffis.
A Waywire spokesman said Andrew was hired in March after another member of the firm’s advisory board told co-founder Sarah Ross that he “had developed a reputation of being able to identify technologies that would be popular with teenagers and which ones wouldn’t be.”
The spokesman said the stock options Andrew got in exchange were “minimal” in comparison to those granted other advisers, who include Lady Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter, and Ustream founder John Ham.
Additional reporting by Garett Sloane