Chris Whittle

H. Christopher Whittle (born August 24, 1947) is an American entrepreneur who has founded four companies in the fields of education and media, serving as the CEO of each. Whittle Communications, a 1,000-person magazine, television, and book-publishing firm, was listed by Advertising Age as one of the 100 largest U.S. media companies in the 1990s. Conceived in 1991, Edison Schools was a pioneer of the U.S. charter-school movement, launching over 100 schools which enrolled 60,000 full-time students. Launched in 2012, Avenues: The World School has become one of New York City's ten largest private schools. Whittle School & Studios, a global system of private schools, was launched in 2015 and has campuses in Shenzhen and Suzhou, China. In addition to founding the above, in the early 1980s, Whittle acquired Esquire, where he served as its chairman and publisher. Early life and education Whittle, the son of Dr. Herbert and Rita Whittle, grew up in Etowah, a small Tennessee town in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. One of his first jobs was delivering newspapers, and he later became a high-school stringer and writer for the local Etowah Enterprise, and for two of the region's dailies, the Chattanooga Times and the Knoxville News-Sentinel. He was also elected the student body president of Etowah High School, and, after graduation, attended the University of Tennessee (UT) in Knoxville. Inspired by his attendance of a National Student Association conference on educational change in Manhattan, Kansas, and signaling his future career focus, Whittle ran to be the student government president of UT's 30,000-student campus. He campaigned on an education-reform platform (its bumper sticker: “For A Better Education”) and he won by a significant margin. Whittle also led large student demonstrations protesting evening curfews for women. While at UT, he also served as an in-state staff member running youth operations for United States Senator Howard Baker. Whittle graduated from UT in 1969 as a “Torchbearer,” the university's highest distinction for student leaders. During this period, Whittle began what would become a lifetime of international work and study. He received a scholarship for a summer in Czechoslovakia with the Experiment in International Living program and was in Prague during the “Prague Spring” when the country attempted to leave the Soviet bloc, and later spent time in other Iron Curtain countries, including Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia.