Faculty

Reid Buckley, founder and head of the Buckley School, has been a champion public speaker since his debating days at Yale. During the 1960s and 1970s, he toured the United States, taking on liberal columnist Max Lerner in clashes that have been compared to the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Among his published works are novels and several books on speaking and writing, the most recent being Strictly Speaking: Reid Buckley’s Indispensable Handbook on Public Speaking.

 

 

Karen Edwards Kalutz is a Master Coach and Director of the Buckley School. Before joining the school in 1988, she taught high school English (among her students were two of Reid’s children, which she says was "intimidating, as you can imagine") . In addition to coaching public speaking seminars, she is active in private coaching for corporate and professional clients and leads the advanced programs for the Buckley School. Ms. Kalutz has two sons.

Harriet Geer DuBose is a Master Coach and has been with the Buckley School since 1990. A leading private coach, she is also a principal in several specialized seminars and workshops. Matriculating at the Medical College of South Carolina, she completed course work for a PhD in Respiratory Physiology before marriage and three sons intervened between Ms. DuBose and her dissertation.

Caroline Avinger began coaching at the Buckley School in 1998, and has assisted Mr. Buckley as a book editor. She received her BA in English from Davidson College, studied at Cambridge University and earned her MA in education from Converse College. She is also a high school English teacher, and, according to Reid Buckley, an inspired prose stylist and on her own account, an inspired prose stylist. She teaches Writing to Make Your Point: Wit, Style & Persuasion when Ms. Parker is unavailable.

Carol Charlton Ehreth Coach and Alternate Seminar Director, was born in Virginia, reared in Manhattan and found her way to Camden, where she now has the pleasure of coaching at the Buckley School with her uncle Reid. After attending the Ethel Walker School, she received her BS in Political Science from the University of Virginia. In addition to engaging in family forensics and researching debate topics for the Buckley School, she is rearing three daughters.

Jenny Maxwell brings a background in television and advertising to her role as coach at the Buckley School. She works as a writer and producer, and was for many years marketing director at one of the top NBC affiliates. She is currently serving as the writer for two Food Network TV series. She earned a BA in Victorian Literature from UNC-Greensboro and her MA in English from the University of South Carolina. She also teaches Writing To Make Your Point: Wit, Style and Persuasion when Ms. Parker is unavailable.

 

One of the Buckley School’s freshest coaches, Barbara Hall Beard grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, and was lured to Camden via a marriage proposal. She received a BS in Business from The College of Charleston (long ago) and a Masters in Educational Counseling from The Citadel (not so long ago). Her background is in business management and she says her favorite job was running a summer camp for girls in the mountains of North Carolina. She fails to mention that she is a triple threat, one daughter and two sons.

Jana Harrell Daley, another Buckley School coach, has practiced law, served as Executive Director of City Year Columbia and works as a freelance consultant. A graduate of Wake Forest University majoring in English and Art History, she went on to receive her law degree from the University of North Carolina. She is the mother of two.

 

 

Laura Edl Albenesius was born in New Jersey, and received her degree in mechanical engineering from the University of South Carolina. She worked as an engineer with DuPont, receiving the Engineering Excellence Award in 1990. She is a part time painter (her mother is a sculptor), who does decorative work in homes, among them faux-finishing (totally comme il faux). One of the Buckley School's newest Coaches, she is the mother of three daughters, Hannah (9), Teague (6), and Isabel (4).

Consulting Faculty

Kathleen Parker

A nationally syndicated columnist, Ms. Parker’s work appears in 325 newspapers nationwide. She is a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors and writes regularly for the paper’s op-ed page. Defeating 102 professional contestants, she won the 1993 H.L. Mencken Award, considered by many the top honor for commentary. Her subsequent awards as a feature writer are too numerous to cite. She makes selective appearances on television’s talking-head shows, including Hardball, The O’Reilly Factor, Court TV, and Greta VanSustern’s “The Point.” She also has contributed to a variety of magazines, including Time, Town and Country, Fortune Small Business, and Cosmopolitan.

A principal in the 3-day Technical & Business Writing Workshops, L. Brent Bozell inaugurated the Brent Bozell Media Workshop in 2002. L. Brent Bozell is a founder of the MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER, the largest media watchdog organization in America. Founder of the PARENTS’ TELEVISION COUNCIL also, he leads the only Hollywood-based organization dedicated to restoring responsibility to the entertainment industry.

Mr. Bozell is a nationally syndicated writer whose work appears in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the L.A. Times, and National Review. He is regularly invited to provide media expertise on news programs by all the major networks and cable affiliates. His appearances include NBC’s Today Show, CNN’s Inside Politics, and Larry King Live, ABC’s Good Morning America, many Fox News Channel shows, C-SPAN, CBN and Entertainment Tonight. He has appeared as a guest and guest host on hundreds of radio shows, from local talk shows to ABC Radio, NPR’s Morning Edition, The Michael Reagan Show, and the Rush Limbaugh Show.

He is married and the father of five.

Fortune Magazine calls Christopher Buckley “the quintessential political novelist of his time.” He has also been called “the best social satirist of his day” and “the best political satirist of his generation.”

Since 1989, he has been founder and editor-in-chief of Forbes FYI Magazine.

He is the author of ten books, five of them national bestsellers, and all of them named by The New York Times as Notable Books of the Year. His novels include The White House Mess, Wet Work, Thank You For Smoking, God Is My Broker, Little Green Men, and No way To Treat A First Lady.

Joseph Heller called Buckley “an effervescent joy.” John Updike described him as “the last of the funny writers, a Benchley with WordPerfect.” Tom Wolfe has called him “one of the three funniest writers in the English language.”

Christopher Buckley’s novella, Field of Screams, may be the funniest piece of satire to have emerged from his inspired imagination so far. (See www.nadapress.com)

Before he was named to head Corporate Communications for AOL, Mr. Buckley was Vice President of AOL Time Warner, where he served as a spokesman and strategist on policy and corporate communications issues.

He served for a decade as Sr. Vice President of Communications at Fannie Mae Corporation, the nation’s largest non-bank financial services company. He was responsible there for external communications, employee communications, corporate advertising, events, and the company’s online activities.

Prior to Fannie Mae, he served the National Republican Congressional Committee as Communications Director, and was press secretary for Congressman Jack Kemp, both in his congressional office and later, in his campaign for the 1988 Republican nomination for President.

While on leave from Fannie Mae, and some said his senses, Mr. Buckley was Communications Director for Dole-Kemp ’96. In a happier incarnation, he was spokesman and Deputy press Secretary to President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush when they ran for reelection in 1984. At age 24, he was Press Secretary to New York Republican gubernatorial nominee Lewis Lehrman.

Mr. Buckley is the author of two comic novels: Family Politics (Simon & Schuster, 1988), and Statute of Limitations (Simon & Schuster, 1990).

He has written for national publications such as The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, National Review, Rolling Stone, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

Mr. Buckley is married and the father of one child.

For decades Priscilla Buckley Illel has been in the business of making complex information accessible to a broad audience. As a journalist her work appeared in magazines such as Travel & Leisure, Smithsonian and Reader’s Digest. She began technical writing with Borland International, and since 1997, has worked for Business Objects, the world leader in business intelligence tools. She won the 1998 Technical Communication Publication Competition sponsored by the France chapter of the Society for Technical Communication.

She lives in France with her husband and two children.

Consulting Scholars

The Genoveses, Elizabeth and Gene, direct the bi-annual Disciplined Thinking Seminars.

Dr. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, She studied at the Institut d'Etudies Politique, Paris, and received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is now Eleanore Raoul Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History at Emory University. She is recipient of many academic honors and author of books and publications too numerous to list. Among her most well-known books are Feminism Is Not the Story of My Life (1995); Feminism Without Illusions: a Critique of Individualism (1991); Within the Plantation Household: Black Women and White Women of the Old South (1988).

Eugene Genovese is a unique combination of Marxist and paleo-conservative, received his B.A. from Brooklyn College, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has since held teaching positions at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Rutgers University, Sir George Williams University, and the University of Rochester where he was named Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences and Chairman of the History Department. He is currently the Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Georgia. He is the author of the recently published The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitation of an American Conservative, and he is the newly elected head of The Historical Society.

Gerard V. Bradley
Gerard V. Bradley is Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame. After graduating first in his class at Cornell Law School, he served as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. While in law school, he co-authored books on labor racketeering and white-collar fraud. Professor Bradley has taught law since 1983, first at the University of Illinois and, since 1992, at Notre Dame. He has published widely in the fields of constitutional law, criminal law, and legal ethics. His essays have appeared in First Things, National Review, The World & I, and Crisis. He has served as President of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, and co-edits The American Journal of Jurisprudence.

Robert P. George
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Founding Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Law School, Professor George holds a doctorate in legal philosophy from Oxford University. He is author of Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (1993) and In Defense of Natural Law (1999), The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis (2001), and editor of Great Cases in Constitutional Law (2000), and many other books. He has served as a Presidential Appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights and a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States.

Additional Faculty

Glenn Tucker, a veteran newspaperman, conducts media training at the Buckley School. As publisher of The Camden Chronicle, he was awarded many national newspaper honors. Independently an astute businessman, he is also an advisor to the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism.

Scott Hogenson is a senior vice president at Dezenhall Resources, a leading national crisis management and reputation defense firm.  Since 1987, the firm has guided a wide variety of companies, trade groups and non-profit groups through controversy and conflict.  

Scott’s communications experience preceding his position at Dezenhall Resources includes an appointment in the Bush Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where he managed nearly 50 public affairs officers, media specialists and speechwriters for the nation’s second largest cabinet agency.  Scott is also a seasoned political professional, working on three presidential campaigns over seven years at the Republican National Committee and managing radio operations for the 2004, 1996 and 1992 Republican National Conventions. 

Vern Ketchem speaks to conferees on selling oneself, selling one's case (or product). The former president of Kelvinator International, he also held sales and general management positions with Amana, Westinghouse and White Consolidated Industries. In retirement since 1990, Mr. Ketchem has conducted a second career as the Executive Director of the Kershaw Memorial Hospital Foundation, which under his imaginative leadership has developed a substantial endowment fund and contributed toward hospital expansion and the purchase of high tech medical equipment.

Emalee Robbins, not unlike a petite and lovely Tasmanian devil, whirls into seminars, urging students to stretch themselves dramatically. An actor, director, former national television host and vocal coach for the Buckley School, she also provides private voice classes for students on request.

Bill McDonald has been writing professionally for 33 years. He is currently a columnist and feature writer for The State newspaper in Columbia, where he won the newspaper’s prestigious Gonzales Award for reporting and excellence in journalism. Before joining the staff of The State, he worked for the News and Courier in Charleston, S.C., and the Tallahassee Democrat in Tallahassee, Florida

David Stanton, a former attorney and current television journalist, assists with media training. Stanton anchors the news at the NBC affiliate in Columbia, South Carolina. He has moderated presidential debates for CNN and NBC, most recently co-anchoring the Republican candidates debate with NBC’s Brian Williams.

Richard Valeriani, a former foreign correspondent with NBC News, also leads media training for the Buckley School. Long years assigned to the Kissinger watch and author of Travels With Henry, he broke into journalism as a young man with the Yale Daily News, as it happens under the guidance of Reid Buckley