Age, Biography, and Wiki
Scott Adams was born on June 8, 1957, in Windham, New York. He developed an interest in drawing comics early on, inspired by the "Peanuts" comic series. Adams is best known for creating "Dilbert," which debuted in 1989 and quickly gained international popularity.
| Occupation | Cartoonist |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 8 June 1957 |
| Age | 68 Years |
| Birth Place | Windham, New York, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Gemini |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is limited public information available about Scott Adams' current height, weight, or body measurements.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Scott Adams keeps his personal life relatively private, and there is not much public information available about his current dating or relationship status.
After a 2022 mass shooting, Adams opined that society leaves parents of troubled teenage boys with only two options: to either watch people die, or murder their own son. He said his comments were inspired by his own stepson, who became addicted to drugs at the age of 14 and later died of a fentanyl overdose. Adams has stressed his opposition to being considered pro-masking and pro-COVID-19 vaccines, and he believes that people unvaccinated against COVID-19 "came out the best" compared to vaccinated people.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Shelly Miles (m. 2006-2014) Kristina Basham (m. 2020-2022) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Scott Adams' net worth is estimated to be approximately $20 million. His primary income sources include syndication fees for "Dilbert," royalties from book sales, and earnings from executive-producing the "Dilbert" TV show.
He later shifted to work at Pacific Bell. To devote time to building a new career, he woke up every day at 4 a.m. and spent time at various endeavors; cartooning proved to be the most successful of them. Adams created Dilbert during this period of personal exploration. The Dilbert name was suggested by his former boss, Mike Goodwin. Dogbert, originally named Dildog, was loosely based on his family's deceased pet beagle Lucy. His submissions of Dilbert and other comic panels to various publications, including The New Yorker and Playboy, were not published, but an inspirational letter from a fan persuaded Adams to keep trying. He worked at Pacific Bell between 1986 and June 30, 1995, and the personalities he encountered there inspired many of his Dilbert characters. In 1989, while still employed at Pacific Bell, Adams launched Dilbert with United Media. To maintain his income, he continued to draw his cartoons during the early morning hours. His first payment for Dilbert was a monthly royalty check of $368.62. Dilbert gradually became more popular. It was syndicated in 100 newspapers in 1991 and 400 by 1994. Adams attributed his success to his idea of including his email address in the panels, which resulted in feedback and suggestions from readers.
Adams offers paid subscriptions for exclusive content on Locals. In 2020, Adams said: "For context, I expect my Dilbert income to largely disappear in the next year as newspapers close up forever. The coronavirus sped up that inevitable trend. Like many of you, I'm reinventing my life for a post-coronavirus world. The Locals platform is a big part of that."
Adams has often commented on political and social matters, although he said in 2016 "I don't vote and I am not a member of a political party." As of 2008, Adams identified his views on social issues as "[leaning] libertarian, minus the crazy stuff." After endorsing Mitt Romney for the 2012 presidential election, Adams endorsed Donald Trump in the following election. During that election, he wrote extensively on Trump, praising his persuasion skills and later described this activity as harming his public speaking career, income, and friendships. He also spoke against Trump's opponent Hillary Clinton, expressing concerns that Clinton's candidacy would lower the status of men in America. In 2017, Adams described his views as supporting left-wing policies he perceived as realistic.
Career, Business, and Investments
- Dilbert Comic Strip: Launched in 1989, "Dilbert" became a global phenomenon, appearing in over 2,000 newspapers across 60 countries. Adams' work earned him several awards, including the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist and Best Newspaper Comic Strip in 1997.
- Non-Fiction Books: Adams has published several successful non-fiction books, including "The Dilbert Principle" and "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big".
- Scott Adams Food Inc.: He owns a vegetarian-based food company, contributing to his diverse income streams.
Scott Raymond Adams (born June 8, 1957) is an American author and cartoonist. He is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip and the author of several nonfiction works of business, commentary, and satire. Adams worked in various corporate roles before he became a full-time cartoonist in 1995. While working at Pacific Bell in 1989, Adams created Dilbert. By the mid-1990s, the strip had gained national prominence in the United States and began to reach a worldwide audience. Dilbert remained popular throughout the following decades, spawning several books written by Adams.
Adams's success grew, and he became a full-time cartoonist as Dilbert reached 800 newspapers. In 1996, his first business book, The Dilbert Principle, was released. It expounded on his concept of the Dilbert principle.
In 1997, Adams won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist and Best Newspaper Comic Strip. Logitech CEO Pierluigi Zappacosta invited Adams to impersonate a management consultant, which he did wearing a wig and false mustache. He tricked Logitech managers into adopting a mission statement that Adams described as "so impossibly complicated that it has no real content whatsoever". His writing in San Jose Mercury News West Magazine regarding the incident earned him an Orwell Award. By 2000, the comic was in 2,000 newspapers in 57 countries and 19 languages.
Adams started Scott Adams Foods, Inc. in 1999, which made the Dilberito and Protein Chef. He sold off his intellectual property in this venture when the product failed in the marketplace in 2003. He was a restaurateur starting in 1997, but exited that business.
Adams claims he is trained as a hypnotist. He credits affirmations for many of his achievements, including scoring in the ninety-fourth percentile on a difficult qualification exam for business school and creating Dilbert's success. He states that the affirmations give him focus. He has described a method he has used that he says gave him success: he pictured in his mind what he wanted and wrote it down 15 times a day on a piece of paper. This technique is used by Dogbert in a 1989 Dilbert strip.
* All Dressed Down and Nowhere to Go (2002) (Still Pumped from Using the Mouse, Casual Day Has Gone Too Far, and I'm Not Anti-Business, I'm Anti-Idiot combined)
* Slapped Together: The Dilbert Business Anthology (2002) (The Dilbert Principle, The Dilbert Future, and The Joy of Work, published together in one book)
Social Network
Scott Adams is active on various social media platforms, where he engages with fans and shares updates about his work and personal life. However, specific details about his social media presence, such as follower counts, are not readily available.
In response to these and other related comments, Dilbert was dropped by numerous newspapers across the country, including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today-affiliated newspapers. Andrews McMeel Syndication, the distributor of Dilbert, announced on February 27, 2023, that it was severing all ties with Adams. Portfolio, his book publisher, announced it was dropping his non-Dilbert book that was scheduled for release that September. Adams defended his remarks as hyperbole and as taken out of context in reportage; he disavowed racism and asserted that nobody would disagree with what he said were his main points: don't discriminate and avoid things that look like they will put you at risk. On March 13, Adams relaunched Dilbert as Dilbert Reborn on the subscription website Locals, minus the earlier Dilbert comics.
In 2015, Adams wrote blog posts predicting that Donald Trump had a 98 percent chance of winning the presidency based on his persuasion skills, and he started writing about Trump's persuasion techniques. His pieces on this topic grew popular, so he started writing about it regularly. Adams soon developed this as a daily video presentation called Real Coffee with Scott Adams, distributed to Periscope, YouTube, ScottAdamsSays.com, and Locals, where he covered topics such as current events, politics, persuasion, and routes to success.
Real Coffee with Scott Adams has featured guests such as Naval Ravikant, Ed Latimore, Dave Rubin, Erik Finman, Greg Gutfeld, Matt Gaetz, Ben Askren, Carpe Donktum, Mark Schneider, Steve Hsu, Michael Shellenberger, Carson Griffith, Shiva Ayyadurai, James Nortey, Clint Morgan, and Bjørn Lomborg. In 2018, Kanye West shared multiple clips on Twitter from a Coffee episode titled: "Scott Adams tells you how Kanye showed the way to The Golden Age. With Coffee." In 2020, President Trump retweeted an episode where Adams mocked Joe Biden.
In a 2006 blog post, Adams asked if official figures of the numbers of deaths in the Holocaust were based on methodologically sound research. In 2023, Adams suggested the 2017 Unite the Right rally was "an American intel op against Trump." In 2020, Adams said that the Dilbert TV show was cancelled because he was white and UPN had decided to focus on an African-American audience, and that he had been discriminated against. In a series of comic strips in September 2022, Dilbert parodied environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) strategies. Part of the plotline involved a black character who "identif[ied] as white" and the company management asking him if he could also identify as gay.
On Christmas Day in 2019, Adams announced on his podcast that he was engaged to Kristina Basham, and later revealed that they had married on July 11, 2020. Basham, a model and baker, has two daughters and is a vice president at WhenHub. On March 10, 2022, Adams announced on his YouTube podcast that he and Basham were getting divorced.
Education
Scott Adams graduated from Hartwick College in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. He later earned an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986.
In summary, Scott Adams' net worth in 2025 is supported by his successful career as a cartoonist, author, and entrepreneur, with a focus on the "Dilbert" franchise and its related ventures.
Adams graduated from Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School in 1975 and was the valedictorian of his class of 39 students. He earned a BA in economics from Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York in 1979. He then moved to California and started work. In 1986, he earned an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. Adams took Dale Carnegie Training and called it "life changing".
