Jenji Kohan

Jenji Leslie Kohan (born July 5, 1969) is an American television writer and producer. She is best known as the creator and showrunner of the Showtime comedy-drama series Weeds and the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black. She has received nine Emmy Award nominations, winning one as supervising producer of the comedy series Tracey Takes On.... Early life Kohan was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Rhea Kohan and Alan W. "Buz" Kohan. She is the youngest of three siblings; the other two are twins Jono and David. Much of the family is in show business: Father Buz is an Emmy Award-winning television writer and producer, as well as a music composer. Mother Rhea is a television writer, novelist, and occasional actress. Brother David is an Emmy Award-winning television producer. Kohan's paternal grandparents were Charles Kohan, who was born in Romania in 1902, and May E. Charles, who was born in New York City, to parents from Russia. The two knew each other from childhood and grew up in a New York City settlement house on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Kohan says that her father was the "king of variety television in his day," writing and producing the Oscars and other variety shows. Her mother was a novelist. Kohan grew up in Beverly Hills, California and graduated from Beverly Hills High School, in 1987. She first attended Brandeis University, then transferred to Columbia University as a sophomore, where she graduated, with a degree in English language and literature, in 1991.