Joe Kernen

Joseph Richard "Joe" Kernen (born January 6, 1956) is a CNBC news anchor. He is currently co-host of CNBC’s Squawk Box. His nickname is "The Kahuna".
Kernen came to CNBC in the 1991 merger with Financial News Network, having joined FNN after a 10-year career as a stockbroker.
Kernen grew up in the Western Hills section of Cincinnati, Ohio and graduated from St. Xavier High School in 1974. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Colorado and a master’s degree in molecular biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked on cancer research.
He is married to Penelope Scott, a former commodities trader from Short Hills, New Jersey. They met after she joined CNBC in 1996, and were married in 1998 on a golf course.
Kernen authored Your Teacher Said What?!: Defending Our Kids from the Liberal Assault on Capitalism (2011) with his then 5th grade daughter Blake.
In 2012, during the fiscal cliff crisis, Kernen at CNBC began a "Rise Above" campaign to pressure Congress to cut spending.
In November 2014 he asked IDA Ireland chief executive Martin Shanahan during an on-air interview why Ireland did not use the pound sterling and asking if Ireland and
Scotland weren't on the same island. The Irish Times chided Kernan for seeming to think that the Republic of Ireland was part of the UK.