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President, Business for Diplomatic Action
Keith Reinhard is founder and President of Business for Diplomatic Action (BDA), a not-for-profit private sector effort to enlist the U.S. business community in actions aimed at improving the standing of America in the world. As president of this organization, Keith has testified to the U.S. Congress and has been broadly featured in the media, from the BBC to The Daily Show, Fox News, CNN, CNBC, and in publications such as The Economist, Fast Company, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, and The Financial Times among others. BDA’s five-part strategy is to sensitize Americans to the rising problem of anti-Americanism, work to change negative perceptions of Americans as a people, amplify those qualities about America that are still admired, build new bridges with key foreign constituents through business-led initiatives, and serve as the connection between the U.S. government‘s public diplomacy efforts and the resources of the private sector.
Keith is also Chairman Emeritus of DDB Worldwide, which ranks among the world’s largest and most creative advertising agency networks with 206 offices in 96 countries. DDB has won more Grand Prix in the 50-year history of the International Advertising Festival in Cannes than any other agency. As a working creative man, Keith was responsible for McDonald’s “You Deserve a Break Today” and for the Big Mac tongue twister, “Two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun.” He also penned State Farm’s long running theme, “Just Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm Is There.”
In 1986 Keith was one of the architects of the advertising industry’s first and only three-way merger, creating Omnicom, the world’s largest advertising and marketing services holding company. Concurrent with the creation of Omnicom, Keith accomplished the merger of Doyle Dane Bernbach and Needham Harper Worldwide, first known as DDB Needham Worldwide and now DDB Worldwide. A member of the Advertising Hall of Fame, Keith Reinhard was referred to as the advertising industry’s “soft-spoken visionary” by Advertising Age, which in 1999 named him one of the top 100 industry influentials in advertising history.
Keith is a past Chairman of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and remains a member of its Advisory Council. He is former Chairman of the Board of Union Theological Seminary in New York and currently sits on the Advisory Boards of the Center for Leadership and Ethics at Duke University, the Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California, the Chief Executive Leadership Institute at the Yale School of Management and the Prostate Cancer Advisory Board at Johns Hopkins. Keith is a member of the boards of The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York, Sesame Workshop, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. He is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Association for a Better New York (ABNY).
Keith is the father of seven children. He and his wife, Rose-Lee, live in Manhattan.
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