John W. Gardner

John William Gardner (October 8, 1912 – February 16, 2002) was US Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) under Lyndon Johnson. He was a strong advocate for citizen participation and founded Common Cause; he became known as "the father of campaign finance reform". A native of California, Gardner attended Stanford University. As an undergrad he set several swimming records and won a number of Pacific Coast championships, and graduated "with great distinction." After earning a Ph.D. in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1938, Dr. Gardner taught at Connecticut College and at Mount Holyoke. During the early days of World War II he was chief of the Latin American Section, Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service. He subsequently entered the United States Marine Corps and was assigned to the O.S.S., serving in Italy and Austria. Gardner joined the staff of the Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1946, and in 1955 he became president of that group, and concurrently, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He also served as an advisor to the U.S. delegation to the United Nations and as a consultant to the U.S. Air Force, which awarded him the Exceptional Service Award in 1956. Gardner was a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and of the Educational Testing Service and a director of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.