SIMONE SWINK’98 IS IN COMPLETE CONTROL

SIMONE SWINK’98 IS IN COMPLETE CONTROL

RUNNING AMERICA’S MOST POPULAR MORNING SHOW IS STRESSFUL, BUT SHE KNOWS THERE ARE BIGGER CHALLENGES IN LIFE.

SCOTT ALLEN

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS HAD A PROBLEM.

It was nearly 4:30 in the morning and the Good Morning America cohost was stuck in the freight elevator at the show’s new studio in downtown Manhattan. So, he texted GMA executive producer Simone Swink. “It’s one of those moments when you look at your phone and you’re like, ‘Is this thing on properly?’ ” says Swink, who was in a cab on the way to the studio when she received the message.

In two and a half hours, nearly 3 million Americans were set to tune in to GMA, and one of their hosts was sitting in his summer shorts between the second and third floors with only a cell phone. “There was literally nothing we could do except call the Are department to get me out of there,” Stephanopoulos says.

Swink quickly went to Plan B, preparing to shift segments to the other two hosts—Michael Strahan and Robin Roberts— in case Stephanopoulos was still trapped at showtime. “I told everybody just to keep going and that we would figure it out. When you’ve been here long enough, you know how to improvise,” says Swink, who has been in charge of GMA since 2021. She was ready to carry on without Stephanopoulos, but when firefighters lowered a ladder through the elevator ceiling to liberate him at 6:15 a.m., she rejoiced, and filmed the whole thing.

“He just yells, ‘Good morning, America!’ right into my camera, right on cue,” Swink recalls. “And then we went and did the show.” But not before she sent a huge bag of bagels, smoked salmon, and cream cheese to the firefighters who rescued Stephanopoulos.

Simone Swink has one of the most demanding jobs in television, overseeing the nation’s most popular morning show at a time when The Today Show is right on its heels and television itself is changing rapidly. Anything that goes wrong is likely to wind up on her desk, and breaking news can instantly upend her plans for the program—or for her life. When Roberts received a surprise invitation to interview the first lady of Ukraine a few weeks after the Russians invaded in 2022, Swink promptly flew to Europe as well, then hiked across the Ukrainian border on foot “like a member of the von Trapp family” because that was the quickest way in.

Swink is not only responsible for the three-hour morning show but also the rest of the GMA franchise, including weekend and overnight shows. That puts her in charge of nearly 30 hours of television each week. She’s up every weekday morning by 4 and at GMA until 5 pan.—and on call nights, weekends, and vacations, too. Fortunately, her cat Fluffy has a forgiving attitude toward her owner’s work hours.

Stephanopoulos calls Swink “the captain of our boat.”

“Think about what she has to juggle every single day,” he says. “A team of anchors—and we’re not always easy—a bigger team of correspondents, and an even bigger crew and staff Then you have to be on top of not just hard news but also entertainment and healthcare and the economy and consumer information and pop culture. To do that every single day is a monumental challenge. Simone just does it with huge intelligence, with skill, and with real sensitivity.”

Add unusual composure to the list. GMA is under scrutiny from top executives at Disney, the owner of ABC, despite its 14-year run as the top-rated morning show, as competitive pressures grow from social media and streaming news programs. For several weeks in late 2025, The Today Show had more viewers even as GMA celebrated its 50th anniversary. Swink acknowledges that her show needs to perform better, but until GMA took back first place in December, she never stopped smiling, at least in public.

“The only thing harder than getting to No. 1 is staying No. 1,” Swink explains. She closely follows the ratings that come out every afternoon, calling them her “daily report card,” but says the pressure never gets to her. “I still think the best three words in morning television are ‘Good Morning America.’ ”

“WHEN YOU’VE BEEN HERE LONG ENOUGH, YOU KNOW HOW TO IMPROVISE.”

Swink’s serenity stems at least in part from sobering personal experience. Six years ago, she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer that required surgery, radiation, and an especially toxic form of chemotherapy. She was still undergoing treatment in August 2021 when she was promoted to executive producer. “There is nothing that will ever happen here at work that will be as stressful as my first day of chemo,” says Swink. “Once you’ve been through cancer and been through chemo, you’re literally never stressed again in morning television.”

GMA has always had an intimate vibe, inviting viewers into the lives of their on-air personalities in times of triumph and challenge alike. Cohost Roberts went through two bouts of cancer while sharing her treatment and recovery with her audience. She also brought along the cameras for a touching visit to her alma mater, Southeast Louisiana University, when the school unveiled the Robin Roberts Broadcast Media Center. Swink excels at spotting moments from the hosts’ personal lives that might work for morning television.

In early December, the Stephanopoulos family had just brought home an 8-week-old dachshund puppy named Stanley from an animal shelter in Tennessee, and he was not behaving well. After enduring the dog’s barking all night, Stephanopoulos’ wife, Alexandra “Ali” Wentworth, had had enough.

At 4:25 a.m., Swink received another unexpected text from Stephanopoulos: “Stanley coming to work.” Dogs are not exactly common on a national news desk, and Swink’s initial reaction was sarcastic. “I’ve always wondered how a perfect Monday would start, and now I know,” she texted back.

But the more Swink thought about it, the more she loved the idea of a puppy visiting GMA. She thought the audience would, too. So, she made him part of the show, assigning a “Stanley cam” to follow the pooch and giving Stephanopoulos time to introduce Stanley Stephanopoulos from the anchor desk. Stanley calmly chewed on Stephanopoulos’ papers while the GMA anchors discussed their canine guest and the rescue organization, Wags and Walks, that provided him. “It was as if it were planned when all I was doing was trying to get my wife and kids some sleep,” says Stephanopoulos.

SWINK, WHO GREW UP IN PORTLAND, OREGON, was bom the same year GMA debuted. Her parents had a hunch she was bound for television. Maybe it was the morning show set 10-year-old Simone built in her bedroom. But Swink insists she had no inkling that TV was her future, and she arrived at Dartmouth wide open to life’s possibilities.

In Hanover, Swink was everywhere. She wrote for The D, joined a sorority, worked as an intern at DAM, and gave such high-spirited and comprehensive campus tours that the alumni magazine published a story about her spiel. Swink credits her work as a tour guide for the confidence to advocate for herself as she built a career.

“The idea of giving tours day in and day out to groups of people I did not know helped make me comfortable early on with being able to speak in meetings,” she says.

Academically, Swink was into history, especially British history, and she stays in touch with professor Carl Estabrook, who recalls her as a keen and highly capable student who was also gracious and personable. He suggests that Swink could have gotten a nudge toward TV from an unlikely place: his course Early Modern England. “There was no Good Morning America—or TV of any kind—in Elizabethan England, but there was commercial theater brimming with issues of the day at Shakespeare’s Globe and, by the late 17th century, a coffeehouse culture enlivened by a popular press,” Estabrook explains. The raucous media environment was “quite relevant for the career path she followed so successfully.” Swink does not disagree, describing her work as witnessing “the first draft of history.”

Swink also had a minor in film studies, but as graduation day in 1998 approached she was planning a career in advertising. She went to the career services office to look for openings. “There was an old file folder that contained a single sheet of paper with a fellowship for Nightline’’ ABC’s late-night news program, Swink remembers. She didn’t get that job, but the show’s executive producer was encouraging, and a seed was planted. Not long after, she landed a job at another ABC program, This Week with Sam and Cokie, hosted by Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts.

Soon, Swink was delivering newspapers to the new guy on the program, George Stephanopoulos, the former senior advisor to the president and White House communications director who had just left the Clinton administration for ABC. Among her early tasks: mailing copies of Stephanopoulos’ memoir, AZZ Too Human, to people near and far.

“I knew she was destined for bigger things,” Stephanopoulos says. “One of the things I’ve learned in this business, and in my past career as well, is that quality of getting it, which is knowing what to do without being asked. She always had that.”

For the next decade, Swink relentlessly climbed the TV ladder, doing stints on everything from The Martha Stewart Show to NASCAR in Primetime, which took her to nearly every NASCAR racetrack in America.

In 2010, Swink joined GMA as a writer, and she was there when the show overtook the long-dominant Today Show to become the highest-rated morning show and one of ABC’s most profitable programs. She rose to head writer and senior producer and, by April 2020, was lead producer of the second hour of GMA.

Then, just as the Covid pandemic was shutting down the world and forcing everyone to wear masks, Swink’s own world unraveled. A routine mammogram revealed a mass in her breast. Initially, she thought she would need only a lumpectomy and the whole thing would be a memory in months. That changed in August 2020.

“I got a call while I was at the studio. At 9:01,1 got a call from the breast cancer surgeon saying, T recommend a single mastectomy. This cancer has spread,’ ” Swink recalls. She sat alone in an office crying while a colleague guarded the door.

After the surgery, Swink needed four rounds of a type of chemotherapy so harsh that it has a nickname: “Red Devil.” The third round made her so sick that she had to be rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. It turned out she had developed neutropenia—essentially an allergic reaction to the chemo that meant her body could no longer fight off disease. She was so weak that her childhood chickenpox came back.

" THE ONLY THING HARDER THAN GETTING TO NOJIS STAYING NO J.”

IN THE MIDDLE OF HER CANCER FIGHT, Swink learned that ABC planned to hire anew executive producer for GMA to replace Michael Corn, who had stepped down in April 2021 amid sexual assault allegations.

“My parents were like, ‘Please do not apply for this. You just finished a year of terrible cancer/ ” Swink says.

But her dream job was too close at hand to let cancer stop her. She was one of 50 people GMA interviewed, and Swink got the position in September 2021. The picture accompanying the release shows the extremely short hair she was still growing out after chemotherapy.

“I said to my parents, Tve never been as stressed as I was with cancer. I will not get stressed in this job. And if I do, I will quit and walk away.’ I’ve been here ever since—and, by the way, I’m fine.”

Swink is more than fine. She took up running and completed a half marathon last year.

Throughout her illness, Swink was open with her colleagues, choosing not to wear a wig during chemo and being honest with the people around her. Stephanopoulos says the team at GMA worried about their colleague but never questioned her choice to double down on work.

“I knew that Simone would worry more if we allowed [her cancer treatment] to get in the way, and she didn’t allow it to get in the way. We followed her lead,” he says, adding that she “didn’t miss a beat.”

NOW, SWINK HAS HER DREAM JOB—and it follows her everywhere. She was holding the Thanksgiving turkey when she got the call that Stephanopoulos was going to interview the notorious “Crypto King” Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas. Almost immediately, she flew to the Bahamas, too.

Swink keeps two phones at her bedside to make sure she doesn’t miss anything important in the middle of the night. “You go into this job knowing this show is seven days a week and, if I’m not at work, I’ve got my phone on,” she says. “It’s sort of like being an ER doctor at all times.”

Regardless, Swink is having fun at GMA, helping to write the first draft of history. She’s worked there too long to be starstruck by her famous coworkers, but sometimes she pinches herself that she’s really the executive producer of the show: “I do get starstruck by the idea that I’m in this job,” she says, “because 16-year-old me would be absolutely thrilled.”