Commentator, editor, teacher, public servant, best-selling author and adviser to presidents—for 30 years, David Gergen has been an active participant in American national life.  He served as Director of Communications for President Reagan and held positions in the administrations of Presidents Nixon and Ford.  In 1993, he put his country before politics when he agreed to first serve as counselor to President Clinton on both foreign policy and domestic affairs, then as special international adviser to the President and to Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

 

David Gergen is a professor of public service and the director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  He is also editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report.  Mr. Gergen also regularly serves as an analyst on various news shows, and he is a frequent lecturer at venues around the world.  In the fall of 2000 he published a best-selling book titled, Eyewitness to Power:  The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton.

 

A native of Durham, North Carolina, Mr. Gergen is a honors graduate of Yale University (A.B., 1963) and the Harvard Law School (LL.B., 1967).  He is a member of the D.C. bar.  In addition, Mr. Gergen served for three-and-a-half years in the U.S. Navy, where he was posted for about two years to a ship home-ported in Japan.

 

Mr. Gergen is active on many non-profit boards and is Chairman of the National Selection Committee for the Ford Foundation’s program on Innovations in American Government.  He frequently lectures here in the United States and overseas and holds fifteen honorary degrees.

 

Mr. Gergen has been married since 1967 to Ann Gergen of England.  She is a family therapist and they live in Cambridge, Mass.  They have two children, Christopher and Katherine.