David G. Bradley
Encyclopedia
David G. Bradley is the owner of the Atlantic Media Company
Atlantic Media Company
Atlantic Media Company is a print and online media company owned by David G. Bradley and based in the Watergate in Washington, D.C. The company publishes several prominent news magazines and services including The Atlantic and Government Executive and those belonging to its National Journal Group...

, which publishes several prominent news magazines and services including The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...

, National Journal
National Journal
National Journal is a nonpartisan American weekly magazine that reports on the current political environment and emerging political and policy trends. National Journal was first published in 1969. Times Mirror owned the magazine from 1986 to 1997, when it was purchased by David G. Bradley...

, The Hotline
The Hotline
The Hotline is a daily political briefing published by the Atlantic Media Company from its headquarters at The Watergate complex in Washington, DC. It is edited by Reid Wilson with Josh Kraushaar...

and Government Executive
Government Executive
Government Executive is an American trade magazine, founded in 1969. In 2009, the independent research firm Market Connections, Inc. cited the magazine as the number one publication read by federal managers...

. Prior to his career as a publisher, Bradley founded the Advisory Board Company
Advisory Board Company
The Advisory Board Company is a global research, consulting, and technology firm partnering with 125,000 leaders in 3,200 organizations across health care and higher education.-History:...

 and Corporate Executive Board
The Corporate Executive Board Company
The Corporate Executive Board Company is a for-profit, publicly-traded firm that provides best practices research and analysis to business executives and professionals worldwide. CEB offers benchmarking datasets, decision-support tools, research briefs, and case studies, as well as executive...

, two Washington-based consulting companies.

Early life and education

Bradley was born in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 and attended the Sidwell Friends School
Sidwell Friends School
Sidwell Friends School is a Quaker private school located in Bethesda, Maryland and Washington, D.C., offering pre-kindergarten through secondary school classes. Founded in 1883 by Thomas Sidwell, its motto is "Eluceat omnibus lux" , alluding to the Quaker concept of inner light...

. His parents were devout Christian Scientists
Church of Christ, Scientist
The Church of Christ, Scientist was founded in 1879 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, by Mary Baker Eddy. She was the author of the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Christian Science teaches that the "allness" of God denies the reality of sin, sickness, death, and the material world...

. He graduated from Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College is a private, independent, liberal arts college in the United States with an enrollment of about 1,500 students. The college is located in the borough of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, 11 miles southwest of Philadelphia....

 and briefly interned in the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

 during the presidency of Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...

. He received a Master of Business Administration
Master of Business Administration
The Master of Business Administration is a :master's degree in business administration, which attracts people from a wide range of academic disciplines. The MBA designation originated in the United States, emerging from the late 19th century as the country industrialized and companies sought out...

 from Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...

 and was also a Fulbright Scholar in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

. Bradley earned a J.D.
Juris Doctor
Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate and first professional graduate degree in law.The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century and was created as a modern version of the old European doctor of law degree Juris Doctor (see etymology and...

 from Georgetown University Law Center
Georgetown University Law Center
Georgetown University Law Center is the law school of Georgetown University, located in Washington, D.C.. Established in 1870, the Law Center offers J.D., LL.M., and S.J.D. degrees in law...

 in 1983.

Bradley is brother to Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR Religion Correspondent and author of Fingerprints of God: In Search of the Science of Spirituality

Advisory Board Company

In 1979 while only 26 years old, Bradley founded the Research Counsel of Washington, later renamed the Advisory Board Company
Advisory Board Company
The Advisory Board Company is a global research, consulting, and technology firm partnering with 125,000 leaders in 3,200 organizations across health care and higher education.-History:...

. The purpose of the company, at least initially, was to do research on any question for any industry. In 1986 the company began doing special research for the health care
Health care
Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...

 industry, which eventually became the main focus of the Advisory Board Company.

In 1983, his company had begun advising other firms in the financial services
Financial services
Financial services refer to services provided by the finance industry. The finance industry encompasses a broad range of organizations that deal with the management of money. Among these organizations are credit unions, banks, credit card companies, insurance companies, consumer finance companies,...

 industry. In 1997, this was completely spun off as the separate Corporate Executive Board
The Corporate Executive Board Company
The Corporate Executive Board Company is a for-profit, publicly-traded firm that provides best practices research and analysis to business executives and professionals worldwide. CEB offers benchmarking datasets, decision-support tools, research briefs, and case studies, as well as executive...

. Both companies are now publicly traded on the NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

. Bradley reportedly earned over $300 million from their sale.

Publishing

In 1997, Bradley made his first acquisition as a publisher, purchasing the National Journal
National Journal
National Journal is a nonpartisan American weekly magazine that reports on the current political environment and emerging political and policy trends. National Journal was first published in 1969. Times Mirror owned the magazine from 1986 to 1997, when it was purchased by David G. Bradley...

. He hired Michael Kelly
Michael Kelly (editor)
Michael Thomas Kelly was an American journalist, a columnist for The Washington Post, and an editor at The New Republic, National Journal, and The Atlantic. He came to prominence via his reporting on the first Gulf War, but suffered professional embarrassment for his role in the Stephen Glass...

, a well-known journalist who had just been fired from The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

after frequently clashing with owner Martin Peretz
Martin Peretz
Martin H. "Marty" Peretz , is an American publisher. Formerly an assistant professor at Harvard University, he purchased The New Republic in 1974 and took editorial control soon afterwards. He retained majority ownership until 2002, when he sold a two-thirds stake in the magazine to two financiers...

. Kelly was known for his controversial criticisms of Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....

 and Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

, but he got along well with Bradley.

In 1999, Bradley purchased The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...

from publisher and real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...

 tycoon Mort Zuckerman for a price of $10 million. Bradley replaced the then current editor William Whitworth with Kelly. Bradley's strategy to improve the business model of The Atlantic, which had lost money for years, was to focus on improving editorial quality. Bradley doubled the newsroom budget of The Atlantic, allowing the magazine to embark on a hiring spree, offering contracts to 25 new writers. Kelly's first hire was to bring back James Fallows
James Fallows
James Fallows is an American print and radio journalist. He has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly for many years. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a...

, one of the magazine's best-known journalists who had been hired away in 1996.

In a profile of Bradley, Slate media critic Jack Shafer reported that he often lost employees-- among them top editors and writers-- because of his tendency to micromanage. Likening Bradley to the late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, Shafer rhetorically asked: "How do you manage the boss, who won't and can't stay out of the dugout?"

Shafer wrote: "If it doesn't give you an aneurysm, think of Bradley as the good Steinbrenner, a sort of "Kindbrenner." Bradley is decent where Steinbrenner is foul and angelic where Steinbrenner is wicked...

"Working for a [such] publisher who expects... can be draining... When [the late Atlantic editor] Michael Kelly edited the Atlantic, he endured Kindbrenner's many meetings... and endless drawings of org charts, flow charts.. After three years of decisional gridlock, Bradley-fatigue set in and Kelly returned to the writing life. As it turned out, the nicest, most considerate man in the universe was a narcissistic and needy bore."

Bradley is also known for the great lengths he'll go to in order to lure writers to The Atlantic. To lure away Jeffrey Goldberg
Jeffrey Goldberg
Jeffrey Mark Goldberg is an American journalist. He is an author and a staff writer for The Atlantic, having previously worked for The New Yorker. Goldberg writes principally on foreign affairs, with a focus on the Middle East and Africa...

, a staff writer for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

, Bradley brought ponies
Pony
A pony is a small horse . Depending on context, a pony may be a horse that is under an approximate or exact height at the withers, or a small horse with a specific conformation and temperament. There are many different breeds...

 to Goldberg's house one day to show Goldberg's three young children.

After originally vowing not to move The Atlantic from its home in Boston for over a year, Bradley created a controversy in 2005 by moving the offices to Washington, where his other enterprises are all headquartered. Several prominent members of The Atlantic, such as esteemed editor Cullen Murphy
Cullen Murphy
John Cullen Murphy, Jr. is an American writer and editor probably best known for his work at The Atlantic, where he served as managing editor and editor ....

, left the magazine as a result of the move.

Politics

Politically, Bradley considers himself a centrist, although he has also described himself as "a neocon guy" who was "dead certain about the rightness" of invading Iraq. In the 2008 U.S. presidential primaries
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...

 he donated $4,300 to Hillary Clinton and $2,300 to Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

 and to Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney
Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and politician. He was the 70th Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007 and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.The son of George W...

.

Work in the Philippines

In addition to publishing, Bradley works with the CityBridge Foundation (formerly the Advisory Board Foundation), which participates in education projects in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

, where Bradley had been a Fulbright Scholar. Bradley's wife, Katherine Brittain Bradley, is the president.

Bradley established the Child Protection Unit (CPU) at the Philippine General Hospital
Philippine General Hospital
The Philippine General Hospital is a tertiary state-owned hospital administered and operated by the University of the Philippines Manila, the University of the Philippines System's Health Sciences Center. It is the largest government hospital administered by the university, and is designated as...

, and was a professor at the University of the City of Manila
University of the City of Manila
Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, or the University of the City of Manila , is a municipal government-funded, tuition-free, university within the district of Intramuros in Manila, the Philippines...

(Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila).
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