Drew Gowing

Reared in socially progressive Los Angeles, Drew Gowing rebelled, as was his fashion, by dropping out of the prestigious University of Southern California after a semester to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) on a full-time, two-year missionary assignment in Canada. Returning to the U.S., he transferred to Brigham Young University to read philosophy, earning a Bachelor of Arts.

He began his career as an intern on the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee in Washington, D.C., and ultimately cut his teeth in the press rooms on Capitol Hill. In the nation's capital, communications and political science combine into the incontrovertible truth that publishing ensures, supports, and shapes the world of politics.

As a congressional press secretary, Gowing was charged with aligning U.S. Representatives' policy initiatives with their constituencies. That began each day by consulting trusted news outlets and sources; referencing both sides of those issues without bias; framing their positions into a cohesive narrative; and delivering the morning briefing to congressional staffers in a spiral bound booklet. A handwritten synopsis of the daily news summary began: "To the Citizens of the World."

A candidate for the JD/MPP in law and public policy, Gowing turned from Boston University to global management consulting, advising the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. But during the 2008 election year, three threads of his past converged when members of the LDS Church raised more than $20 million to pass California's Proposition 8. Here, church, state, and law collided in a rare instance in which an existing civil right was withdrawn from a specific and targeted minority.

Coterminous with the digital revolution, Gowing was tapped in 2008 to edit a not-for-profit political exposé for the digital age, whereupon he returned to public life to devote what he calls his "second act" to its service. Drew Gowing resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his family. He is the inaugural editor of Charlatan Magazine: The Exposé of Politics & Style.