The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Features thousands of biographic and thematic essays on Jewish women around the world. Learn more

Abbi Jacobson

b. February 1, 1984

by JWA Staff
Our work to expand the Encyclopedia is ongoing. We are providing this brief biography for Abbi Jacobson until we are able to commission a full entry.

Photograph of comedian Abbi Jacobson by Lane Savage.

Courtesy of Comedy Central.

Frustrated by the lack of opportunities for young female comedians, Abbi Jacobson teamed up with fellow comedian Ilana Glazer to create the immensely popular Broad City. Jacobson studied fine art and video production at the Maryland Institute College of Art and took a year to study stand-up-comedy under poet Jeremy Sigler. After graduating in 2006 she moved to New York and began taking classes with the Atlantic Theater Company and the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, where she befriended Ilana Glazer. Finding it impossible to break into established comedy groups, Jacobson and Glazer created Broad City as a web series on YouTube which ran from 2009–2011 and adapted it as a live show for Upright Citizens Brigade. In 2014 the pair debuted Broad City as a full-length sitcom on Comedy Central, loosely based on their own mishaps as struggling twenty-somethings trying to make it in New York. Jacobson launched a one-woman show, Welcome to Camp, in 2011. She also created two coloring books in 2013, Color This Book: New York City and Color This Book: San Francisco.

How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Abbi Jacobson." (Viewed on June 8, 2023) <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/jacobson-abbi>.

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