 Jack Miller
Chairman
Jack Miller is a prominent Chicago area entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the founder and former President/CEO of Quill Corporation, which became the nation's largest independent direct marketer of office products, employing over 1,300 people with annual sales in excess of $630 million before being acquired by Staples, the giant office supply company, for $680 million in 1998. After the sale of Quill, Mr. Miller became chairman of the board at Successories Inc. (www.successories.com) a business-to-business mail order firm which he subsequently acquired. He also focuses on real estate development and investment at Millbrook Properties and The Benida Group. He is a very active philanthropist serving as chairman of the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America's Founding Principles and History and the JM Freedom Foundation.
He also supports a wide variety of community improvement efforts through the Audrey and Jack Miller Family Charitable Foundation, named for his late wife, and the Jack and Goldie Wolfe Miller Family Foundation, named for his current wife, a successful entrepreneur in commercial real estate. He recently established the Foundation for Peripheral Neuropathy with the idea of it becoming a public foundation supporting the funding of collaborative research at a number of institutions.
Mr. Miller was inducted into Philanthropy World magazine's Hall of Fame in January, 2008. Mr. Miller graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in Journalism. He is the author of Simply Success, How to Start, Build and Grow a Multimillion-Dollar Business'the Old Fashioned Way, published by John Wiley & Sons in February, 2008. Please visit www.simplysuccessbook.com |
 Rear Admiral Michael Ratliff
(US Navy, ret.)
President
Prior to moving into the nonprofit higher education sector in 2000, Mike Ratliff served a distinguished 30-year naval career, retiring as Director of Naval Intelligence. He served at every level of responsibility including seven years at sea. As the Navy's top intelligence officer, he was responsible for 17,000 personnel and a budget of $1.9 billion. Admiral Ratliff received his bachelor's from Towson University, studied as a Fulbright Scholar at the London School of Economics, was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Johns Hopkins, and a Capstone Fellow at the National Defense University. He can be reached at mratliff@gojmc.org. |
 Michael A. Deshaies
Vice President
Mike Deshaies is responsible for all external communications. A 1980 graduate of the State University of New York at Oswego with a bachelor's in communications and political science, he has more than 25 years experience in communications in government, manufacturing, consumer products, technology and in the nonprofit sector. Mr. Deshaies can be reached at mdeshaies@gojmc.org. |
 Dr. Michael L. Andrews
Vice President
Dr. Andrews oversees the Miller Center's academic programs and higher-education initiatives. A native of Montana, he received his doctorate in American intellectual history from Tulane University, and his master's degree, also from Tulane, in European history, with an emphasis on modern Germany. He formerly served on the faculty of St. John's College, teaching at both the Santa Fe and Annapolis campuses. Dr. Andrews can be reached at mandrews@gojmc.org. |
 Dr. Pamela Edwards
Director of Academic Initiatives
Pamela Edwards studied Philosophy at the University of British Columbia and Intellectual History at Simon Fraser University in Canada before writing her doctoral thesis on Coleridge’s Political Thought at University College London. She has published numerous scholarly essays and reviews in journals and edited
volumes including the JBS, Enlightenment and Dissent and the Journal of the History
of Political Thought, Blackwell’s Companion to Eighteenth Century Britain, and with
Frederick Beiser The Cambridge History of Nineteenth–century Philosophy. She is the
author of The Statesman’s Science: History, Nature and Law in the Political Thought
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge which was published by Columbia University Press in
2004. She has recently authored the essay on Coleridge’s political and religious thought for the Oxford Handbook of Coleridge which will be published in the Spring of 2009. From 2002–2007 she was a member of the History Department of Syracuse University. She is now Director of Academic Initiatives for The Jack Miller Center, an independent educational non-profit organization based in Philadelphia and focusing on the history and political thought of the American founding. Her new scholarly work focuses on historicism, evolutionary ideas of progress, and the political implications of the theory of life controversy during the long British Enlightenment. She can be contacted at pedwards@gojmc.org. |
 Dr. Rafael Major
Director of Faculty Development and Online Education
Rafael Major is the Director of Faculty Development and Online Education. Prior to joining the Miller Center, he taught at Michigan State University's James Madison College, Rhodes College (Memphis, Tenn.) and Trinity College (Hartford, CT). In addition to academics, he is a former restaurant owner and advertising manager. Dr. Major has published article-length studies on Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Leo Strauss, Q. Skinner, and is currently finishing a book length study on Shakespeare's Comedies. He can be reached at rmajor@gojmc.org. |
 Jack Guipre
Director of Operations
Jack Guipre serves as director of operations. Mr. Guipre received a bachelor's degree from Montana State University and a J.D. from New York University. Mr. Guipre has clerked for judges at the Montana District Court, Montana Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Palau. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He can be contacted at jguipre@gojmc.org. |
 Nikki Longworth
Development Consultant
Nikki Longworth provides consulting services regarding development efforts for the Jack Miller Center. She has worked with not-for-profits since 1974, beginning with The American Freedom Train Foundation, Inc., a traveling museum of American history that toured the country during the nation's bicentennial. Her non-profit experience also includes management positions with the Alexandria Virginia Tourist Council, the Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee, the Hilton Head Island Chamber of Commerce and the Indianapolis City Market Corporation, where she served as executive director. She was public information director at the U.S. Small Business Administration and an associate director of public affairs at the White House. She can be reached at nikkil@hughes.net. |
