Abbi Jacobson

Abbi Jacobson is co-creator of the hit Comedy Central show Broad City. An active illustrator, she is also an author, most recently of the New York Times bestselling Carry This Book.

Created by Abbi Jacobson ’06 (General Fine Arts B.F.A.) and Ilana Glazer, Broad City is an offbeat web series centered on the misadventures of two female best friends. The show developed a cult following online and received national attention from The Wall Street Journal, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and The New York Times before catching the eye of Saturday Night Live and Parks and Recreation star Amy Poehler. Poehler teamed up with Jacobson and Glazer to take the show to television. With Poehler on board as an executive producer, the quirky comedy is now a hit show in its fourth season on Comedy Central.

Broad City began in fall 2009 when Jacobson and Glazer were looking to create some new material in video form. "Both of us came to a point where we felt we weren't creating enough in our own voice. We had a unique dynamic and figured we'd just run with that," Jacobson said. The duo are both alumnae of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York and continue to work on individual stand up and improv projects.

According to Jacobson, MICA had an influence on the show. "Although I didn't have the show in mind when I was a student, being in the General Fine Arts Department enabled me to explore various mediums. Minoring in video sparked my interest in the moving image, writing, and acting," she shared.

My years at MICA allowed me to train myself to have to come up with ideas quickly and figure out how to execute them."

Jacobson continues to pursue illustration and has released three books, including, Carry This Book, a New York Times bestseller released in 2016. She previously published two coloring books, Color This Book: New York City and Color This book: San Francisco.