Mitch Pearlstein is Founder and President of Center of the American Experiment, a nonpartisan, tax-exempt, public policy and educational institution that brings conservative and free market ideas to bear on the hardest problems facing Minnesota and the nation. A think tank, for short. He also has been special assistant for policy and communications to Gov. Albert H. Quie of Minnesota; a research fellow at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota; assistant to University of Minnesota President C. Peter Magrath (pronounced Ma-grah); director of public information at the State University of New York at Binghamton; a reporter for The Sun-Bulletin, again in Binghamton; and a columnist for CityBusiness and Twin Cities Business Monthly. Dr. Pearlstein has been editor of American Experiment Quarterly, the Center’s former flagship publication. He also is editor of Certain Truths: Essays about Our Families, Children and Culture from American Experiment’s First Five Years (1995); co-editor (with Wade F. Horn and David Blankenhorn) of The Fatherhood Movement: A Call to Action (1999); co-editor (with Annette Meeks) of Minnesota Policy Blueprint (1999); and co-author (with Katherine A. Kersten) of Close to Home (2000). He’s currently writing a book about former Minnesota governor and congressman, Albert H. Quie: Riding into the Sunrise: Al Quie and a Life of Faith, Service and Civility. A former adjunct professor of public administration at Hamline University in St. Paul, he earned his Ph.D. in educational administration, with an emphasis on higher education policy, at the University of Minnesota. He did his undergraduate work in political science at SUNY-Binghamton. In 2006, the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota named him one of 100 “Distinguished Alumni” from the college’s first 100 years. Dr. Pearlstein is a director of the Greater Twin Cities United Way; a former chairman of the St. Paul-based Partnership for Choice in Education; and an emeritus director of the General John Vessey Jr. Leadership Academy. He is a member of the New York-based Commission on Parenthood’s Future; the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute Advisory Council; the Advisory Board for the Tocqueville Center at the University of Minnesota; the Public Policy Advisory Committee of the School of Education at the University of St. Thomas; and the Hiawatha Leadership Academy’s Board of Advisors. He was a member of the Citizens League Higher Education Study Committee; the Aspen Institute’s Domestic Strategy Group; the Steering Committee of Minnesotans for Major League Baseball; and he’s a founder of the Washington-based Center for New Black Leadership. He is married to the Rev. Diane Darby McGowan, deacon at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Minneapolis. They live in Minneapolis and have four children and a brand new grand daughter. |
