Mr. Kemp is Founder and Chairman of Kemp Partners, a strategic consulting firm which seeks to provide clients with strategic counsel, relationship development, and marketing advice, helping them accomplish business and policy objectives.
Mr. Kemp was named co-chair of the Lincoln Bicentennial Cabinet, a group formed by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission to support the Commission’s public/private efforts, in May 2007 along with former Congressman William H. Gray. The Commission was established by Congress to plan educational, public and legacy events to mark the 16th president’s 200th birthday in 2009.
In March 2005 Mr. Kemp was asked to co-chair the Council on Foreign Relations’ Russia Task Force. He also served on Speaker Hastert’s Saving America’s Cities Working Group since early 2005.
From January 1993 until July 2004 he was co-director of Empower America, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy and advocacy organization he co-founded with William Bennett and Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.
In September 2001, Mr. Kemp helped form a new non-partisan, non-profit think tank, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to counter the terrorist propaganda efforts. He has also been writing a weekly syndicated column for the Copley News Service nationwide since February of 2000.
Mr. Kemp received the Republican Party’s nomination for Vice President in August of 1996 and since then has campaigned nationally for reform of taxation, Social Security and education.
In 1995, he served as chairman of the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform, which promoted major reform and simplification of our tax code in order to unleash the American entrepreneurial spirit, increase economic growth and expand access to capital for all people.
Prior to founding Empower America, Jack Kemp served for four years as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He was the author of the Enterprise Zones legislation to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation in urban America and continues to advocate the expansion of home ownership among the poor through resident management and ownership of public and subsidized housing.
Before his appointment to the Cabinet, Mr. Kemp represented the Buffalo area and western New York for 18 years in the United States House of Representatives, from 1971-1989. He served for seven years in the Republican leadership as Chairman of the House Republican Conference.
Before his election to Congress in 1970, Mr. Kemp played 13 years as a professional football quarterback. He was captain of the San Diego Chargers from 1960-1962. He was also the captain of the Buffalo Bills, the team he quarterbacked to the American Football League Championship in 1964 and 1965, when he was named the league’s Most Valuable Player. He co-founded the American Football League Players Association and was five times elected its president. In 2006 Mr. Kemp was named as one of the NCAA’s “100 Most Influential Student-Athletes.” He was also recognized by Sporting News as one of the Top 50 Quarterbacks of All Time in 2005.
Mr. Kemp was born and raised in Los Angeles and educated in the LA public schools. He is married to the former Joanne Main of Fillmore, CA. Both are graduates of Occidental College located in Los Angeles, CA. They have four children (Jeffrey, Jennifer, Judith and Jimmy) and seventeen grandchildren. The Kemps reside in Bethesda, Maryland, and have a home in Vail, Colorado.
Mr. Kemp has been a director of Oracle since 1995. Additionally, he has been a key strategic advisor to many corporations and serves on the board for Hawk Corp and Six Flags. He is also an advisory board member of Toyota’s Diversity initiative, Thomas Weisel Partners, a merchant banking firm in San Francisco, and Thayer Capital in Washington.
