Fortuna Calvo-Roth

Who is Fortuna Calvo-Roth?

Fortuna Calvo-Roth is an American journalist, professor and businesswoman. She was born in Paris to Sephardic Jewish parents, and raised in Lima, Peru.

She emigrated to the United States in 1952 and attended the University of Missouri, majoring in journalism. She returned to Peru to begin a writing career. She was hired as a copy editor at La Prensa, which had been modeled on the New York Herald Tribune. but after three days was informed by the editor-in-chief that he would not employ women in the newsroom. He offered her a job on the society page but she declined.

A year later she got a job at Vision, a Latin American magazine, as the New York correspondent for the Brazil edition. On one assignment she interviewed the editor who had fired her who had become Peru's finance minister. He failed to recognize her, but when he asked her why she was not working in her native country, she quickly refreshed his memory. She remained at Vision for 12 years, rising to editor-in-chief of the Spanish-language edition, but left in 1969, in part to raise her children.

She attended New York University's School of the Arts, studying film, television and radio. She also studied acting with Stella Adler, and played "Kitty Duval" in William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life.