Management Team
Jonathan Cowan
President
Jon Cowan is the President and co-founder of Third Way. Previously, Mr. Cowan founded and ran Americans for Gun Safety, which The Washington Post dubbed the “dominant” group on the gun safety side of that debate. Mr. Cowan also was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, teaching a course on youth and political advocacy. During the second Clinton administration, Mr. Cowan was Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, helping to manage a federal agency of 9,000 employees with a $27 billion annual budget. He also served as Senior Advisor to the HUD Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. In 1992, he co-founded Lead…or Leave, which became the nation’s leading Generation X advocacy group. He also co-authored Revolution X and has been featured in many media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, U.S. News & World Report, Time Magazine, Nightline and 60 Minutes.