After World War II, Americans were hungry to understand what they had lived through and what the postwar world might bring. Civic groups and universities turned to diplomats, generals, and leading public thinkers for answers. My father saw that voices capable of explaining the world deserved real, professional representation. From that small seed, planted at our kitchen table, HWA was born. 

I joined HWA in 1972. By then, my father had already done the most challenging thing. He built something from nothing. My role over the next 53 years was different. I worked to build on what he started and help HWA grow alongside a changing world. Getting to help guide that growth has been the privilege of my working life. 

Over those decades, the conversation moved from classrooms and community halls to boardrooms and conventions. Then the internet made information abundant and insight priceless. When COVID shut the doors on live gatherings, our team adapted overnight, and it proved something to me: the appetite for human connection doesn't disappear. It just waits for the right room. 

In 2019, Ellen and I made one of the most consequential decisions in HWA’s history. We joined forces with our friends at WME. That partnership gave HWA a larger stage and opened up a new world of talent across entertainment, sports, music, literature, digital media, and culture, letting us offer a compelling voice on nearly any subject. 

Now we're living through another transformation. AI and other technologies will make us more productive and give people greater freedom in how they spend their time. Yet as the world fills with digital and artificially generated content, authentic human connection will only matter more. 

That's why I believe the speaking business is entering one of its most promising eras. Technology won't replace human connection. If anything, it will make that connection more important—and more powerful. 

Looking back across those 53 years, I'm proud of the part I've played. Of course, no one builds an agency alone. 

My wife, Ellen, of blessed memory, was more than my partner in life. For 26 years, she was also a guiding light for HWA, helping shape the values and ethos that still define the agency today. My sister, Arlene, has spent decades as a careful steward of our finances, providing the discipline and stability upon which growth depends. 

Then there are the generations of colleagues who've built this agency alongside us. Their average tenure here is more than ten years, including two people who've been with us for 45 years, and many others for more than 25. Their devotion, judgment, and hard work have carried HWA through every era and prepared us for the next one. 

Eighty years later, we're still in the business my father started at that kitchen table: bringing remarkable people together and creating countless moments of “collective effervescence”, that spark of energy, joy, and sense of possibility that happens when people share a room, exchange ideas, and become, even briefly, part of something larger than themselves. 

That possibility has always been at the heart of HWA. It's our inheritance, and it's why I look toward HWA’s future with so much hope and excitement.