Reared in socially progressive Los Angeles, Drew Gowing rebelled, as was the form, 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 and earn the distinction Bachelor of Arts.
He began his career as an intern on the Senate Labor and Human Resource 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 combines into the incontrovertible truth that publishing ensures, supports, and shapes the world of politics.
Gowing went on to serve a Congressional Deputy Press Secretary for U.S. Representative and Nevada Regent Jim Bilbray. Commissioned to align policy initiatives with public perception, he began each day by sourcing news headlines into a morning briefing, and curating without bias those narratives to reach a diverse constituency. Spiral bound briefing booklets were delivered to congressional staffers prior to their arrival in the office, and a handwritten synopsis of the daily news summery 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 where to advise the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. However, during the 2008 election year, three contingents to his past coincided when the LDS Church collected over $20+ million to promulgate the State of California’s Proposition 8. Herewith, Church, State and Law collided in what is described as the only instance in US history where civil and pre-existing rights were taken away from a specific and targeted minority.
Coterminous with the advent of the iPhone, 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 is the inaugural editor of Charlatan Magazine: The Exposé of Politics & Style.