Tom Rosshirt, La Lumiere Class of 1977, will present the keynote address at the 45th Commencement Exercises on Friday, May 25 at the historic Marsch Gymnasium on La Lumiere’s campus.
Rosshirt struck out for Washington, DC twenty years ago with the goal of working in politics. After knocking on several (about 56) doors, he finally landed a job in politics as an unpaid intern in Sen. Tom Harkin’s office where he learned to fax. By 1997 he achieved his goal of writing in politics and left the fax machine behind. He was hired as a domestic policy speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore and, shortly thereafter, became his foreign policy spokesman traveling with the Vice President to places like London, Davos, Kiev, Cape Town, Moscow, and Kuala Lumpur. As the 2000 campaign loomed, Rosshirt left his position with the Vice President for a position with the National Security Council, as a foreign policy speech writer for President Bill Clinton. In 2001, he joined Clinton speechwriters Jeff Shesol and Paul Orzulak in starting West Wing Writers, a Washington-based writing and communications firm. President Clinton was their first client.
Over the last ten years, Rosshirt has advised foreign heads of state, written communications plans for one of the largest US non-profits, advised a world-famous media mogul on announcing a career change, wrote a campaign plan for a major corporate merger, advised an embattled corporation on winning back public trust, and managed crisis communications for a prominent national institution caught in a backlash of negative opinion.
Rosshirt grew up in the Midwest and graduated from the University of Notre Dame, where he majored in philosophy. He then attended Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he earned a Master’s Degree and began doctoral studies in human development.
Rosshirt has lived in Austria, Japan and Iran, and traveled in 40 countries. He is a nationally-syndicated columnist whose work is distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is married with two children and lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland. La Lumiere School is pleased to welcome him back to campus to address the Class of 2012.