Jeffrey Garten - Biography

Jeffrey Elliot Garten (born October 29, 1946) was the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade under the Clinton administration and former Dean of the Yale School of Management. Before this, Garten served as a managing director of the Blackstone Group and Lehman Brothers on Wall Street, and on the White House Council on International Economic Policy under the Nixon administration and on the policy planning staffs of Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance of the Ford and Carter administrations. He is the author of five books and currently holds the position of Juan Trippe Professor in the Practice of International Trade, Finance, and Business at the Yale School of Management, a position without tenure.

Early life and career

Garten earned his B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1968 and an M.A. in 1972 from Johns Hopkins University. In 1980, he received a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. Garten also served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1972, and achieved the rank of Lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division and Captain in the Special Forces. In 1971 he carried the title of Advisor to the Royal Thai Army.

After Johns Hopkins, Garten worked in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. He then went on to Wall Street, becoming a managing director of Lehman Brothers and the Blackstone Group. At Lehman, he specialized in debt restructuring in Latin America. He also lived in Tokyo and directed and expanded the Asian investment banking business for that firm. At Blackstone he worked in the financial advisory and mergers and acquisitions arena. After Blackstone, he became the Undersecretary of Commerce for international trade in the Clinton administration. From 1995 to 2005, Garten was dean of the Yale School of Management. During his tenure, the school was ranked in the top ten in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and The Economist, and retained its #19 rank in Businessweek's rankings.

From 1997 to 2005, Garten contributed a monthly column for BusinessWeek. Currently, he is a frequent columnist for Newsweek International. He has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and Foreign Affairs.

Personal life

Garten is married to Ina Garten, who hosts Food Network's Barefoot Contessa and has written several best-selling cookbooks. He is often featured on his wife's cooking show sampling Ina's meals. The Gartens live in Southport, Connecticut, and East Hampton, New York.

He sits on the board of directors for several corporations, including Aetna Corporation, CarMax, Inc., Credit Suisse Asset Management, The Conference Board, and The International Rescue Committee, and is chairman of Garten Rothkopf, an international advisory firm. He is also on the advisory board of the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Bibliography

• A Cold Peace: America, Japan, Germany and the Struggle for Supremacy (1992)
• The Big Ten: The Big Emerging Markets and How They Will Change Our Lives (1997)
• World View: Global Strategies for the New Economy (2000) (Editor and contributor)
• The Mind of the CEO (2001)
• The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda for Business Leaders (2002)