Karl Zinsmeister

Karl Zinsmeister is an American journalist and public policy researcher. From 2006 to 2009, he served in the White House as President George W. Bush's chief domestic policy adviser, and Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. He is currently a vice president at The Philanthropy Roundtable.^[1]

Career

Zinsmeister is a graduate of Yale University where he studied history and was a member of Manuscript Society. He also spent time as a special student at Trinity College, Dublin, in Ireland. He won college rowing championships in both the U.S. and Ireland.^[2]

His first job in Washington was as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat. He was later named DeWitt Wallace Fellow, and eventually appointed to the J.B. Fuqua Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, where over three decades he researched a range of topics extending from social welfare and demographics to economics and cultural trends.^[3]

Zinsmeister's writing has been published in periodicals ranging from The Atlantic Monthly to Reader's Digest and the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal. He has been an adviser to many research and policy groups,^[4] and has testified before Congress and Presidential commissions on topics like family policy, daycare, farm subsidies, and the Iraq war. He has made many appearances on television and radio.^[5]

He has written and edited many books, including a 2015 volume on how public policy is changed by savvy donors, and a 2014 look at charter school effectiveness (with a spinoff in the Wall Street Journal^[6]). He wrote two books of Iraq War reporting, other works on education, economics, and population trends, a storytelling cookbook, and a non-fiction comic book.^[7] In late 2015 he published an essay in the Wall Street Journal predicting a revival of Catholic schools ^[8]

In 2016, a major new 1,342 page reference book created by Zinsmeister, The Almanac of American Philanthropy, was published after three years of in-depth research.^[9] The book, which aims to serve as the authoritative reference on private giving in the U.S., contains sections on America's greatest givers, living and dead; the major achievements of American philanthropy in nine areas (including Medicine, Education, the Arts, Religion, Overseas giving, Local projects, and so forth); an annotated list of essential readings in the field; a collection of leading quotes on philanthropy; a 22-page foldout timeline mapping important philanthropic events in the U.S. from 1636 to 3015; and a long introductory essay in which Zinsmeister analyzes the cultural importance of philanthropy to the success of the United States.^[10]

The American Enterprise

For a dozen years before becoming the White House Domestic Policy Adviser (1994 to 2006), Zinsmeister was editor-in-chief of The American Enterprise, a national magazine covering politics, business, and culture.^[11]

Zinsmeister was an embedded journalist during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and then served three additional months-long embeddings with combat units during the insurgency stage of the war. He shot a documentary film about soldiers in Iraq, called "WARRIORS", which was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and nationally broadcast by PBS.^[12]

He wrote three books of Iraq reporting. Boots on the Ground: A Month with the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq, published in August 2003, was the first Iraq War book published by an embedded journalist. Dawn Over Baghdad: How the U.S. Military is Using Bullets and Ballots to Remake Iraq was one of the first portrayals of the insurgency phase of the Iraq War. Combat Zone: True Tales of G.I.s in Iraq was a rare non-fiction graphic novel from Marvel Comics.^[7]

White House employment

During his years in the West Wing, as director of the Domestic Policy Council, Zinsmeister was involved in policy making on topics like the 2008 mortgage and student-loan credit crises, immigration reform, housing, biotechnology and stem cell policies, airport congestion, education reform, transportation issues, health policy, faith-based schooling, an 8,000-job layoff in Ohio, poverty, crime, family policy, civil rights, and veterans affairs.^{[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]}

Some published work produced by the White House Domestic Policy Council under Zinsmeister:

• Dole/Shalala Commission report on improving care for wounded warriors^[22]
• White House report on disadvantaged children served by faith-based urban schools^[23]
• White House report on progress in stem-cell science^[24]
• Immigration reform bill of 2007^[25]

Post-White House career

After leaving the White House, from 2009 to 2010, Zinsmeister became an executive in his native region of upstate New York with L. & J. G. Stickley, an Arts and Crafts furniture manufacturing firm founded by Gustav Stickley. In 2011, he wrote a White House memoir. A storytelling cookbook, regional culture guide, and celebration of localism that he co-created with two of his three children, called Finger Lakes Feast, was published in 2012 and widely reviewed.^[26]

Zinsmeister returned to Washington to serve as vice president at The Philanthropy Roundtable, an association of donors, where he has produced many books, magazines, and Web postings.^[27]

These include The Almanac of American Philanthropy,^[28] a definitive 1,342-page resource on the significance and history of the U.S. charitable sector. He has also written a book about how private donors help transform American governance, Agenda Setting,^[29] and a book assessing the national importance of charter schools, From Promising to Proven.^[30]

He has edited many books in recent years. These include one examining the country's best programs for helping difficult populations like the homeless, released prisoners, former addicts, and welfare recipients succeed in the workforce ("Clearing Obstacles to Work").^[31] Another, Catholic School Renaissance, analyzes the revival of inner-city Catholic schools and why that is important to the nation.^[32] The book "Serving Those Who Served"^[33] is a manual for the new field of philanthropy for veterans, service members, and their families—where Zinsmeister has been a leader, growing out of his military reporting and his veterans work at the White House.

Zinsmeister has recently uncovered the mostly unknown history of "national-security philanthropy" in the U.S.—by which donors have made crucial contributions to defense of the nation, from before our founding to the present day.^[34] He has analyzed who gives most to charity in the U.S.,^[35] and tracked the rise of donations by Americans for overseas development work.^[36]

His biographies of great philanthropists include profiles of Julius Rosenwald,^[37] George Eastman,^[38] Alfred Loomis,^[39] and Oseola McCarty.^[40]

Personal life

Zinsmeister is married and has three children.^[2] He currently lives on a houseboat in Washington, D.C.^[41]

References

External links

• Books by the author at Amazon
• Current employer
• Writing at current employer
• Personal website
• Biographical info from White House years
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Trailer for Zinsmeister PBS film
• Partial archive of The American Enterprise during Zinsmeister editorship