Sunday, August 15, 2010
A business executive from the publishing and timber industries, Theodore “Tod” Sedgwick has no experience as a foreign diplomat. But the chosen ambassador to Slovakia has donated substantially to Democratic candidates, especially to President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Sedgwick was officially sworn in on July 28, 2010, although he had already taken the oath of office on his front porch on Martha’s Vineyard on July 4.
Sedgwick is the great-great-grandson of Theodore Sedgwick (1746-1813), a member of the Continental Congress who served in the U.S. House and Senate. His grandfather, Ellery Sedgwick, Sr., was editor and publisher of Atlantic Monthly magazine. His father, Ellery Sedgwick, Jr., was a naval intelligence officer during the D-Day invasion and his uncle, William Ross Bond, was a brigadier general who was killed in the Vietnam War. He is also a distant cousin of actress Kyra Sedgwick.
After growing up in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, Tod Sedgwick graduated from Harvard College, cum laude, in 1971, majoring in Ottoman history. After traveling in India, he took a job with a small newspaper in Huntington, West Virginia.
In 1978, at the age of 29, Sedgwick was editing the energy sector newsletter Coal Outlook. When the owner decided to sell the publication, Sedgwick bought a 70% stake for $70,000. The newsletter was the first piece of what eventually became Pasha Publications (named after his dog), a publishing house with 22 insider newsletters specializing in the energy, defense and environment markets.
In 1998, Sedgwick sold the energy wing of the publisher to the Financial Times group for $17.8 million. He kept three newsletters—the Bird Hunting Report. Business Mailers Review and Synthesis, which was aimed at Episcopal ministers who needed help improving their sermons—and started a company named Sedgwick Publications, although he unofficially called it Wing and Prayer Publishing.
In 2002, he founded Io Energy, an online energy information company covering the natural gas, coal and electricity industries, which he sold two years later, and was president of Red Hills Lumber Co., a producer of pine flooring.
Sedgwick has served on a number of private company boards, including Inside Higher Ed, Atlantic Information Services, and Washington Business Information Inc. He also has served on the boards of cultural institutions such as the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Shakespeare Theater Co. and The Gennadius Library in Athens, Greece, and on the boards of land preservation organizations, including the Civil War Preservation Trust, which he chaired from 2006 to2009, and Wetlands America Trust, an affiliate of Ducks Unlimited. He was on the National Council of the Land Trust Alliance, and is a member of the Chief Executives Organization, an organization of global business leaders.
Sedgwick bundled more than $200,000 for the Obama campaign. In addition, he contributed $42,416 of his own money to Democrats in the 2008 cycle and another $10,000 for Barack Obama’s inauguration. An enthusiastic bird hunter, Sedgwick tried to organize Sportsmen for Obama as a counterweight to the Republican–leaning National Rifle Association.
Sedgwick and his wife, Kate, have two daughters.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
New Ambassador Takes Oath On Vineyard Haven Front Porch (by Peter Brannen, Vineyard Gazette)
Six Degrees of Kyra Sedgwick (by Laurie Bennett, Muckety)
New US Ambassador: Hunter, Publisher, Obama Fundraiser (by Tom Nicholson, Slovak Spectator)
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