Secretary Jack Kemp †
secretary Jack Kemp †
American politician
Jack Kemp was a pro football player, congressman, cabinet secretary and vice-presidential candidate.
Kemp served in Congress for nine terms (1971-1989). He was elected the incoming Republican freshman class president, and 10 years later was chosen Chairman of the Republican Conference (third ranking in House Republican leadership). Kemp served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1989-1993, where he championed affordable housing, tenant management, and a housing voucher program for homeless veterans and their families. Upon leaving office in 1993, he joined forces with William Bennett and Jeane Kirkpatrick to found Empower America. He also served as chairman of the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform, which promoted major reform and simplification of the U.S. tax code.
Jack Kemp died on May 2, 2009. President Obama posthumously awarded Jack Kemp the Presidential Medal of Freedom in August, 2009.
Read more:
Adonis Hoffman, ‘Can a new Jack Kemp step up to help with tax reform?’, The Hill, 24 April 2017
David Frum, ‘Why Jack Kemp’s Legacy Is More Relevant Than Ever’, The Atlantic Post, 15 October 2015
Suzy Khimm, ‘What Paul Ryan learned from Jack Kemp’, The Washington Post, 31 August 2012
Lanny Davis, ‘Kemp: True Purple Nation Leader’, The Hill, 11 May 2009
Joe Slade White
Joe Slade White
Political strategist and media consultant
Joe Slade White is a Democratic political strategist and media consultant. His past clients have included Presidential candidates, U.S. Senators, Governors, Members of Congress, and Mayors, as well as statewide and local initiatives throughout the country.
At the age of 21, White was hired by the 1972 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator George McGovern, joining the campaign’s traveling staff and finding a place on President Richard Nixon’s “White House Enemies List.” White worked briefly as a press secretary to McGovern.
When he was 23, White launched his own political consulting firm. White worked to elect the first Native American to the United States Senate, the first woman Attorney General and Governor of Michigan, and worked on the first campaign in the nation to defeat a ban on bilingual education for Hispanic children. He has also served as an advisor and created television advertisements for Vice President Joe Biden, T. Boone Pickens, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, General Wesley Clark, U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, AT&T and others. A number of his television campaigns have won national recognition. The American Association of Political Consultants has recognized White’s television work with more “Pollie Awards” than they have bestowed on any of his Democratic peers.
In 2010, White served as media strategist for Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s campaign, that was named by RealClearPolitics.com as the #5 upset in the country.
Twitter: @joesladewhite
Lynn Whitfield
Lynn Whitfield
Actress
Lynn Whitfield is an American actress who began her acting career in television and theatre, before progressing to supporting roles in film. She won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special and an NAACP Image Award for her performance as Josephine Baker in the HBO movie The Josephine Baker Story (1991). She also won NAACP Image awards for her work in Touched by an Angel (1998), The Planet of Junior Brown (2000) and Redemption: The Stan Tookie Williams Story (2004).
Her film work includes performances in A Thin Line Between Love and Hate (1996), Eve’s Bayou (1997), The Cheetah Girls (2003), Madea’s Family Reunion (2006), andThe Cheetah Girls 2 (2006).
Whitfield had a series of television appearances before her film career began, including playing Jill Thomas in the award-winning series Hill Street Blues.
Whitfield achieved international recognition in the title role of The Josephine Baker Story (1991), the HBO biopic requiring her to age from 18 to 68. She portrayed the American Folies Bergère star who became a Resistance fighter during WWII and civil rights activist. In a highly publicized casting call, Whitfield was chosen over more than 500 women. She won an Emmy Award for her role and said this gave her, “the greatest sense of accomplishment and realization of my vision. It absolutely called upon everything I thought I could do at that point.”
Twitter: @MsLynnWhitfield
Rory Kennedy
Rory Kennedy
Co-founder and President of Moxie Firecracker Films
Rory Kennedy has been Co-Founder and President of Moxie Firecracker Films for over 12 years. An Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, Rory Kennedy has produced more than 35 celebrated documentaries, covering topics from the global AIDS crisis, human rights, domestic abuse, poverty, drug addiction, and political corruption. Her films have appeared on HBO, PBS, Lifetime Television, A&E, Court TV, The Oxygen Network and The Learning Channel.
In 1999, Kennedy’s HBO film American Hollow, the story of a tight-knit Appalachian family, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, launching an acclaimed and prolific career and earning Kennedy the first of many Emmy Award nominations.
Kennedy was hosted by The Common Good in 2012: Special Screening of “ETHEL” at MOMA.
Twitter:@roryekennedy
Brian Kelly
Brian Kelly
Journalist, author
Brian Kelly is the editor and chief content officer of U.S. News & World Report, a multi-platform publisher of news and consumer information products. Kelly is a member of the executive committee with primary responsibility for all the company’s content, which includes the websites usnews.com and rankingsandreviews.com, the digital-only U.S. News Weekly magazine, print and e-book guides on education and health care, and a conference and events business.
Kelly joined U.S. News in 1998 after serving as a senior editor at The Washington Post, and was named editor at U.S. News in April 2007. Kelly has led the transformation of U.S. News from a traditional print news magazine to a largely digital publishing company with a range of influential products including the Best Colleges and Best Hospitals rankings. Under his leadership, usnews.com has gained an audience of more than 20 million monthly users. Kelly has also expanded U.S. News’ Money, Personal Finance, and Health content and launched new Car and Travel products as well as two national conferences.
He is the chairman of U.S. News STEM Solutions, a national forum that brings together corporations, educators and policymakers working to help the U.S. fill jobs by creating a more skilled and competitive workforce. He is on the board of the World Affairs Council of Washington and a member of the Economic Club of Washington.
Twitter: @BKellyUSN
Randy Hustvedt
Randy Hustvedt
Senior Vice President focusing on EMM’s strategic growth
Randy Kaufman Hustvedt is a Senior Vice President focusing on EMM’s strategic growth as well as client relationship management. Randy’s expertise includes estate and income tax planning, pre-deal planning, multi-generational issues, impact investing and philanthropy. Previously, she worked at Evercore Wealth Management as a Wealth Advisor, and at Federal Street Advisors, where she managed the firm’s Family Office Services. Randy also spent seven years at LongVue Advisors, a multi-family office that she co-founded, and six years with Fleet Bank and its predecessor, BankBoston, where she was the founder and managing director of the Wealth Strategies Group in Fleet Bank’s Private Client Group. Before becoming a wealth adviser in 1998, Randy held various investment banking and tax structuring positions at J.P. Morgan and practiced corporate tax law at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.
William Hubbard
William Hubbard
American lawyer
William N. Hubbard III is Chairman and President of Center Development Corporation, and served in similar capacities with its predecessor, Center Housing Partnerships.
Hubbard served in the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program and is a former Associate of the Wall Street law firm of Thatcher Profitt & Wood. He is also co-founder of the Environmental Action Coalition. Hubbard served as General Counsel to New York State Senator Thomas Bartosiewicz, was a member of the State Democratic Senator Advisory Committee; and was Finance Chairman for Assemblyman Peter Grannis, Chairman of the New York State Assembly Insurance Committee.
Hubbard is currently a Trustee of Citizens Housing Planning Council and the Citizens Budget Commission, a Director of the State Council on Waterways, and a Trustee of Trees New York. He serves on the National Governing Board of Common Cause.
Hubbard convened a panel on The Primaries and the Presidential Election at The Common Good in 2008.
Twitter: @williamChubbard
Karen Elliott House
Karen Elliot House
American journalist
Karen Elliott House retired in 2006 as Publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Senior Vice President of Dow Jones & Company, and a member of the company’s executive committee. She is a broadly experienced business executive with particular expertise and experience in international affairs stemming from a distinguished career as a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and editor.
From 1989 to 2002 she served as Vice President International and then President International of Dow Jones, responsible for The Wall Street Journal’s print editions in Asia and Europe as well as for magazine and television ventures overseas. These included representing Dow Jones on the boards of CNBC Asia and Europe, the Far Eastern Economic Review and Vedomosti, a publishing partnership in Russia. House served as The Wall Street Journal’s publisher from 2002 until her retirement, and in that role was responsible for all news, editorial, sales and other business functions of The Wall Street Journal and its editions around the world. Her journalism awards include a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for coverage of the Middle East (1984), two Overseas Press Club awards for coverage of the Middle East and of Islam and the Edwin M. Hood award for Excellence in Diplomatic Reporting for a series on Saudi Arabia (1982).
House has served and continues to serve on multiple non-profit boards including the Rand Corp., where she is vice-chairman, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Society, the German-American Council, and Boston University. She also is a member of the advisory board of the College of Communication at the University of Texas. Currently, she is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and author of On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines—and Future, published in September 2012 by Knopf.
Twitter: @khouse200
Sherry Hormann
Sherry Hormann
Film director
Sherry Hormann is a director and writer, known for Desert Flower (2009), which tells the fascinating story of Waris Dirie’s journey from nomad, to supermodel, to UN ambassador; 3096 Days (2013); Guys and Balls (2004); The Pursuit of Unhappines (2012); and A Regular Woman (2019).
Matthew Hoh
Matthew Hoh
Iraq war veteran
Matthew Hoh is the director of the Afghanistan Study Group, a network of foreign and public policy experts and professionals advocating for a change in U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. A former State Department official, Matthew resigned in protest from his post in Afghanistan over U.S. strategic policy in Afghanistan in 2009.
Prior to his assignment in Afghanistan, Matthew served in Iraq, first in 2004-2005 in Salah ad Din Province with a State Department reconstruction and governance team, and then in 2006-2007 in Anbar Province as a Marine Corps company commander. When not deployed, Matthew worked on Afghanistan and Iraq policy and operations issues at the Pentagon and State Department from 2002-2008. Matthew’s writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post and his resignation letter has been cited as an Essential Document by the Council on Foreign Relations. Matthew was recently named the 2010 Ridenhour Prize Recipient for Truth Telling.
Michael Hirsh
Michael Hirsh
American journalist
Michael Hirsh is the national editor for Politico, and has previously served as chief correspondent for National Journal and as the senior editor and national economics correspondent for Newsweek. Hirsh was also Newsweek’s Washington web editor and authored a weekly column for Newsweek.com, “The World from Washington.” Earlier on, he was Newsweek’s foreign editor, guiding its award-winning coverage of the September 11 attacks and the war on terror. He has done on-the-ground reporting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places around the world, and served as the Tokyo-based Asia Bureau Chief for Institutional Investor from 1992 to 1994.
Hirsh has appeared many times as a commentator on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and National Public Radio. He has written for the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Harper’s, and Washington Monthly, and authored two books, Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s Future over to Wall Street and At War with Ourselves: Why America is Squandering its Chance to Build a Better World. Hirsh has received numerous awards, including the Overseas Press Club award for best magazine reporting from abroad in 2001 and for Newsweek’s coverage of the war on terror, which also won a National Magazine Award.
Hirsh spoke at The Common Good in 2010.
Twitter: @michaelphirsh
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Katrina VandeN Heuvel
Editor, publisher, partial owner of The Nation
Katrina Vanden Heuvel is the editor, publisher, and partial owner of the magazine The Nation in which she has been the magazine’s editor since 1995. She is a frequent guest on numerous television programs and is a self-described liberal and progressive.
In 1989, Vanden Heuvel was promoted to The Nation’s editor-at-large position, responsible for its coverage of the USSR. In 1990, she co-founded Vy i My (“You and We”), a quarterly feminist journal linking American and Russian women. In 1995, Vanden Heuvel was made editor of The Nation. Vanden Heuvel’s blog at The Nation is called “Editor’s Cut.” She also writes a column for the Washington Post op-ed page. She is the co-editor of Taking Back America—And Taking Down The Radical Right and editor of The Dictionary of Republicanisms. She is also co-editor (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers and editor of The Nation: 1865-1990, and the collection A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy and September 11, 2001.
She is a frequent commentator on American and international politics on ABC’s This Week, and also on MSNBC, CNN, and PBS. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. She received many awards for public service from New York Civil Liberties Union’s Joseph Callaway Prize for the Defense of the Right to Privacy; the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's Voices of Peace Award; and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s Justice in Action Award
Katrina Vanden Heuvel was hosted by The Common Good in 2010: Election Insurrection: The Mid-Term Elections 2010.
Twitter: @KatrinaNation
James Harmon
James Harmon
Investment banker
James Harmon is Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Caravel Management LLC, the investment manager of the Caravel Fund (International) Ltd., an emerging and frontier markets fund that was launched in 2004. In 2004, Harmon was elected Chairman of the Board of the World Resources Institute (WRI), a global policy and research institution.
Harmon is the Chairman of the Egyptian American Enterprise Fund, a private corporation seeded by U.S. Government funds to promote the development of the Egyptian private sector with a particular focus on small-and medium-sized enterprises. Harmon served as the Chairman, President and CEO of the Export-Import Bank of the United States from 1997- 2001. Ex-Im Bank assists in financing the export of US goods and services to international markets. Prior to Ex-Im Bank, Harmon was Chairman and CEO of the investment bank Schroder Wertheim & Co. Harmon was the U.S. Representative on the High Level Panel for Infrastructure Investment 2011, a panel appointed by the Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors of the G20. Harmon is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Trustee Emeritus of Brown University and Barnard College.
Harmon spoke at The Common Good Forum 2015 as part of the panel “Global Opportunities and Challenges: Charting Growth Around the Globe.”
Twitter: @james_A_Harmon
Chris Hayes
Chris Hayes
American journalist
Christopher Hayes is an editor-at-large of The Nation and host of Up with Chris Hayes on MSNBC. From 2010 to 2011, he was a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. From 2008-2010, he was a Bernard Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. From 2005 to 2006, Hayes was a Schumann Center Writing Fellow at In These Times.
Since 2002, he has written about political culture and political economy. His essays, articles and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Nation, The American Prospect, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, The Guardian, and The Chicago Reader.
His book about the crisis of authority in American life, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, will be published by Crown in June 2012.
The Common Good hosted Hayes in July of 2012: Chris Hayes: Getting Past the “Fail Decade”.
Twitter: @chrislhayes
Jane Hamsher
Jane Hamsher
American film producer, author, blogger
Jane Hamsher is a U.S. film producer, author, and blogger, best known as the author of Killer Instinct, and as the founder and publisher of the politically progressive blog FireDogLake (2004 – the present). She also co-produced the subsequent films Apt Pupil (1998), Permanent Midnight (1998), and From Hell (2001). A contributor to The Huffington Post, she posts also in liberal Websites and political magazines, such as AlterNet and The American Prospect.
FireDogLake (abbreviated FDL) is a US collaborative blog which primarily specializes in covering news from a left-progressive/left-liberal stance. Firedoglake won a 2005 Koufax Award for “Best Series” for its detailed coverage of the Plame affair, while being in close contention for “Best New Blog” and “Best Group Blog”. In late 2005, Hamsher expanded FDL into a group blog.
The Common Good hosted Hamsher in 2010: Election Insurrection: The Mid-Term Elections 2010.
Twitter: @janehamsher
Mark Halperin
Mark Halperin
Co-managing editor of Bloomberg Politics
Mark Halperin is co-managing editor of Bloomberg Politics, which leads Bloomberg’s political and policy coverage, including news, analysis, commentary, narrative, data analytics across all platforms. He is also a regular contributor to MSNBC’s Morning Joe and a frequent guest on Charlie Rose.
Prior to joining Bloomberg in 2014, Halperin served as editor-at-large and senior political analyst for TIME, covering politics, elections and government for the magazine and TIME.com. He was also the creator and author of TIME.com’s The Page, a news and analysis tip sheet reporting on current political stories, campaign ads, TV clips, videos and campaign reactions from every news source, along with Halperin’s own analysis. Prior to joining TIME in April 2007, Halperin worked at ABC News for nearly 20 years, where he covered five presidential elections and served as political director from November 1997 to April 2007. In that role, he was responsible for political reporting and planning for the network’s television, radio and Internet political coverage. He also appeared regularly on ABC News TV and radio as a correspondent and analyst, contributing commentary and reporting during election night coverage, presidential inaugurations and State of the Union speeches. Additionally, Halperin founded and edited the online publication The Note on abcnews.com, which was characterized as the most influential daily tip sheet in American politics by publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair.
He is the co-author of New York Times bestsellers Double Down: Game Change 2012 (2013) and Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (2010); author of The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President (2007); and co-author of The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008 (2006).
Amidst multiple allegations of workplace sexual harassment and misconduct at his prior job at ABC News, Halperin was fired by both Showtime Networks and NBC News at the end of October 2017. Since then, he has attempted to make amends publicly.
Twitter: @MarkHalperin
Senator Chuck Hagel
Senator Chuck Hagel
Former United States Senator from Nebraska
Charles Timothy “Chuck” Hagel is a former United States Senator from Nebraska. A member of the Republican Party, he was first elected in 1996 and was reelected in 2002. In 2009, he was elected as Chairman of the Atlantic Council.
Hagel is a Vietnam War veteran, having served in the United States Army infantry, attaining the rank of Sergeant (E-5) from 1967-1968. While serving during the Vietnam War, he received the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, two Purple Hearts, an Army Commendation Medal, and the Combat Infantryman Badge.
Hagel was a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; and Intelligence Committees. He Chaired the Foreign Relations International Economic Policy, Export, and Trade Promotion Subcommittee, the Banking Committee’s International Trade and Finance, and Securities Subcommittees. Hagel also served as the Chairman of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the Senate Climate Change Observer Group. Hagel is also the author of the recently published America: Our Next Chapter, a straight forward examination of the current state of our nation.
Hagel spoke at a Meet & Greet hosted by The Common Good in 2007.
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Robert Greenwald
Robert Greenwald
Producer, director, political activist
Robert Greenwald is a producer, director and political activist, and the founder and president of Brave New Films. Under Greenwald’s direction, Brave New Films has produced a series of short political videos, including the Fox Attacks and Real McCain campaigns. In total, Brave New Film’s short videos have been viewed over 56 million times in the past two years, inspired hundreds of thousands of people to take action and forced pressing issues into the mainstream media.
In addition, Greenwald is the director/producer of several documentaries: Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (2006), Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005), and Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism (2004). Greenwald also executive produced a trilogy of political documentaries: Unprecedented: The 2000 Election (2002), Uncovered: The War on Iraq (2003), and Unconstitutional (2004).
Prior to his documentary work, Greenwald produced and/or directed more than 55 television movies, miniseries and feature films. Greenwald’s films have garnered 25 Emmy nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, the Peabody Award and the Robert Wood Johnson Award. He was awarded the 2002 Producer of the Year Award by the American Film Institute. He has been honored for his activism by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California; the Liberty Hill Foundation; the Los Angeles chapter of the National Lawyers Guild; Physicians for Social Responsibility; Consumer Attorney’s Association of Los Angeles; Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy and the Office of the Americas.
The Common Good hosted Greenwald in September of 2009: Screening and Discussion with: Robert Greenwald and Jim Miller.
Twitter: @robertgreenwald
Vice President Al Gore
Vice President Al Gore
45th Vice President of the United States
Former Vice President Al Gore is co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management. He is a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and a member of Apple, Inc.’s board of directors. Gore spends the majority of his time as chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit devoted to solving the climate crisis.
Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980 and 1982 and the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.
He is the author of the bestsellers Earth in the Balance, An Inconvenient Truth, The Assault on Reason, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, and most recently, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change. He is the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary and is the co-recipient, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.”
Twitter: @algore
Alex Gibney
Alex Gibney
Writer, producer, director
Alex Gibney has been called “the most important documentarian of our time” by Esquire Magazine and “one of America’s most successful and prolific documentary filmmakers” by The New York Times.
Gibney has won an Academy Award, multiple Emmy Awards, the Grammy Award, several Peabody Awards, the DuPont-Columbia, The Independent Spirit, The Writers Guild of America Awards, and others. Gibney was honored with the International Documentary Association’s Career Achievement Award in 2013 and the first ever Christopher Hitchens Prize in 2015.
Gibney has made many films, including Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Taxi to the Dark Side, and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. He has also made several shows, including Parched and Dirty Money. He executive produced The Looming Tower, a drama series based on Lawrence Wright’s bestseller The Looming Tower that premiered on Hulu in February 2018.
The Common Good hosted Mr. Gibney in November of 2010: Screening of Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer.
Twitter: @alexgibneyfilm