David WhitmanDAVID WHITMAN is the president and founder of Whitman Wordsmithing & Communications. In a wide-ranging career, he was chief speechwriter/senior writer in the U.S. Department of Education Office of Communications and Outreach, and chief speechwriter fr U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. He has worked as a freelance journalist, author, editor, and consultant, specializing in education reform and environmental, energy, and social policy issues. He wrote Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism, a prize-winning study of secondary schools that succeeded in closing achievement gaps; and was an adjunct instructor at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs and a professor for its introductory class in reporting and writing. David was a contributing editor and senior writer for U.S. News & World Report, where he served as chief correspondent covering social policy, and wrote widely on abortion, poverty, welfare reform, homelessness, ethnicity and race, family policy, immigration, inequality, and other social trends, and a visiting Media Fellow with the U.N. Foundation's Better World Fund, where he reported on promising alternatives for reducing oil dependence and greenhouse gas emissions. He was also a Journalism Fellow in the Alicia Patterson Foundation Program, and a senior research assistant at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. David's numerous TV and radio appearances include: Think Tank (PBS); The John Hockenberry Show (MSNBC); All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Talk of the Nation, The Scott Simon Show, and The Diane Rehm Show (National Public Radio). He has sung semiprofessionally in two doo-wop a cappella groups, is an avid hiker and fly fisherman, and also works as a certified and licensed massage therapist in the D.C. area. Whitman is married to journalist Lynn Rosellini; they have one daughter, Lily. Read More Read Less