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Don Stinson was once a corporate suit who flew around America in private jets. One day he quit, eventually making his way to a life of tasty ocean waves and faded polo shirts from eBay.
In 2017, Don wrote "Downstairs at the White House," his true story of loitering outside the Oval Office as a teenage clerk during Watergate. Mercifully, it still sells well enough for him to afford pineapple on his pizza whenever he wants ... which is never.
Don spent half his life clawing up the newspaper industry management ladder, becoming senior vice president of marketing of the Newspaper Division of Gannett Co., Inc. (publisher of USA TODAY), charged with overseeing the sales and marketing operations of 100 daily newspapers with revenues of $5 billion. In 2005, he received the Newspaper Association of America’s Lifetime Sales and Marketing Leadership Award.
Don later launched a revenue strategy firm that found solutions to sales and margin problems with math instead of added resources. That was much more fun.
As curious as his link to Watergate are his ties to celebrity executions. Among others, Don is related to Mary, Queen of Scots, Queen Anne Boleyn, and Lady Jane Grey, all of whom were beheaded, and Mary Towne Easty who was hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. As a result, his family motto is “We don't just die. We’re executed.”
A graduate of the School of Public Affairs at American University, Don also attended M.I.T., Harvard Business School and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. He is a Fellow of the Strategic Planning Society, a member of The Author's Guild, and an honorary member of the Union of Russian Journalists, a story that involves a great deal of vodka.
In the 1990s, Don worked with Russian newspapers to build a free press during the Yeltsin era. Although that didn't work out so well, he nevertheless managed to be held hostage in a smelting plant, slept in an insane asylum guarded by sheepherders, and wrestled a goat on Russian airliner Aeroflot. The goat won.
He (Don, not the goat) lives in Miami, Florida and Western North Carolina. He’s currently working on a new book, “Gordonstone,” coming 2023.
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