Management Team
Jonathan Cowan
President
Mr. Cowan, like the other co-founders of Third Way, has over 15 years experience at senior levels of progressive politics and government. Prior to co-founding Third Way, 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. In the spring of 2000, Mr. Cowan 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 served as 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. Previously, he was Senior Advisor to the HUD Secretary and was 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 was featured on the cover of U.S. News & World Report, in Time, on Nightline, 60 Minutes, Today and in many other media outlets as a generational spokesperson. He also co-authored Revolution X and has published op-eds in the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.