Bio

Mdp_20070628_056_9274lo_2Andrei Cherny has made his mark at the intersection of public policy, politics, and government.  He has been called a “superstar” by CNN, a “progressive reformer” by Washington Monthly, one of the Democratic Party’s “top young thinkers” by the New York Times Magazine’s Matt Bai, an “all-round political heavyweight” by Phoenix Magazine, “smart, bold, and thoughtful” by the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne, and one of the “more creative thinkers” on the politics of the future by U.S. News and World Report’s Michael Barone.

 

Cherny has provided policy and strategy advice to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Harry Reid, Cabinet members, Governors, United States Senators, members of the House of Representatives, national labor unions, Fortune 100 CEOs, and prominent civic leaders. 

 

Cherny is President and a founder of Democracy, a public policy enterprise that seeks to spur new ideas on the big challenges of the 21st century.  Democracy -- available in print and online -- has a readership in every state and over 150 countries around the world.  In its first year, it was named "Best New Publication" from a field of 700 magazines by the Utne Independent Press Awards. 

 

Cherny is the author of The Next Deal: The Future of Public Life in the Information Age, one of the top-selling political books of 2001, which examined the roles technological and generational change have played over the course of American history and laid out a progressive vision for government and community life in the 21st century.  The book detailed how American life is being remade by a new desire for individualized choice and personal decision-making power.  The Los Angeles Times praised the book as "visionary in scope" and it has been lauded by everyone from Al Gore to even Newt Gingrich who called it "one of the most thoughtful books about...the information age to be produced by anyone of any ideological background."  In 2005, the Financial Times reported that The Next Deal "has become required reading" in Britain's Labour government.

 

In 2004, Cherny was a Senior Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Cherny's new book, The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour, tells the story of how a small group of Americans, with few resources and against all expectations, fed half of one of the largest cities in the world by air for more than a year, thereby avoiding World War III, winning the hearts of our defeated enemies, and inspiring people around the world to believe in America's fundamental goodness.   

As the 2000 Platform Director, Cherny was the lead negotiator and chief 0573_fix drafter of the national 2000 Democratic Party Platform.  He was charged with conducting the delicate negotiations that led to a deal on a platform that was widely seen as building consensus in the Democratic Party on a range of bold new ideas.

A former Senior Speechwriter and advisor to Vice President Al Gore, Cherny was the youngest White House Speechwriter in American history. From February 2003 through the spring of 2004, Cherny served as a senior advisor for John Kerry's Presidential campaign. He was a key member of the small team that crafted the message, policy, and communications strategies which led to Senator Kerry's upset victory in the presidential primaries. 

 

He writes frequently on politics, policy, and history for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New Republic, is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, and appears as a commentator on television news programs including ABC's Good Morning America, The O'Reilly Factor, and CNN Morning.

Cherny, his wife, and son reside in Phoenix, Arizona.  He is a criminal prosecutor and an officer in the United States Navy Reserve.  He graduated with honors from Harvard College and from the University of California's Boalt Hall Law School.