Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to Speak at 2006 Leadership Trust Meeting
Newt Gingrich is well known as the architect of the "Contract with America" that led the Republican Party to victory in 1994 by capturing the majority in the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years. After he was elected speaker, he disrupted the status quo by moving power out of Washington and back to the American people. Under his leadership, Congress passed welfare reform, passed the first balanced budget in a generation and passed the first tax cut in 16 years. In addition, the Congress restored funding to strengthen national defense and intelligence capabilities, an action later lauded by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission.
But there is a lot more to Newt Gingrich than these achievements. As an author, Gingrich has published 10 books including the best-sellers Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America (January 2005), Contract with America and To Renew America. Lessons Learned the Hard Way, 1945, and Window of Opportunity are more books to add to his accomplished list. He is also the author of Gettysburg and Grant Comes East, active history studies in the lessons of warfare based on a fictional account of the Battle of Gettysburg and its aftermath. His latest book, Never Call Retreat: Lee & Grant, the Final Victory is the third book in the series (June 2005). Newt Gingrich is also the author of Saving Lives and Saving Money, which demonstrates how to transform health and healthcare into a 21st century system.
Newt Gingrich is chairman of the Gingrich Group, a communications and consulting firm that specializes in transformational change, with offices in Atlanta and Washington, DC. He serves as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., and is also a news and political analyst for the Fox News Channel.
Newt was first elected to Congress in 1978 where he served the Sixth District of Georgia for 20 years. In 1995, he was elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives where he served until 1999. The Washington Times has called him "the indispensable leader" and Time magazine, in naming him Man of the Year for 1995, said, "Leaders make things possible. Exceptional leaders make them inevitable. Newt Gingrich belongs in the category of the exceptional."
His experiences as the son of a career soldier convinced him at an early age to dedicate his life to his country and to the protection of freedom. Realizing the importance of understanding the past in order to protect the future, he immersed himself in the study of history, receiving his bachelor's degree from Emory University and master's and doctorate in Modern European History from Tulane University. Before his election to Congress, he taught history and environmental studies at West Georgia College for eight years.
He resides in Virginia with his wife, Callista. He has two daughters and two grandchildren.
