A Return to Our Roots
Finding the Smoking Gun— and a Book Deal
I
nstead of spending his summer relaxing in the sun after finishing his first year of law school, Craig Winters ’06 was holed up in an office scouring emails subpoenaed from insurance broker Marsh & McLennan. Eliot Spitzer, New York State’s crusading attorney general, was investigating potential abuses in the insurance industry, and Winters had snagged one of 30 coveted internships in the Investment Protection Bureau of the Manhattan Division of Public Advocacy. It may not have been glamorous most days, but Winters made a discovery that catapulted him to the front page of the Wall Street Journal. For 12 coffee-fueled weeks, Winters sat with rubber covers on all 10 fingers—looking like Edward Scissorhands, he jokes— turning 250,000 pages. “When you’re first doing it, you think this might be a smoking gun, this might be a smoking gun,” says Winters. “You read thousands of pages and find nothing at all. Zero.” Determined to persevere, Winters was the only intern to return to the monotonous task in the fall. On September 15, he found what he was looking for: an email sent by a Marsh broker to an insurance company employee requesting a fake quote, one that would be “close, but not a winner,” Winters recalls. “I couldn’t believe I was staring at this piece of paper,” he says. “The case was blown open in a second.” The document revealed Marsh’s practice of rigging bids in order to steer businesses to particular insurance companies so they could garner special commissions. Everyone associated with the email was fired, and the case has changed the way insurance companies do business. “Craig is very insightful,” says Matthew AUTUMN 2005
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A real page-turner: Craig Winters at the A.G.’s office.
This fall, 20 Root-Tilden-Kern (RTK) Scholaffordable housing. “The scholarship will ars will receive full tuition for the first time give me a lot of freedom in the rest of my in more than two decades. career to keep doing the work I’ve been inWhile the RTK Program has produced terested in so far,” says Johnson. leaders in public service ever since Arthur Returning to a class size of 20 allowed Vanderbilt launched it in 1951, financial program administrators to make the scholar constraints in 1984 forced it to reduce its group more diverse. “[RTK faculty director] scholarships from a full-tuition award for Vicki Been ’83 and I were thrilled to be able 20 students each year to offer full funding to to a two-thirds tuition 20 scholars—for many stipend for only 10 to 12 scholars, this is the students annually. best phone call of their But thanks in large lives!” says Deb Ellis In making this part to Jerome Kern ’60, ’82, assistant dean of who donated $5 milpublic interest law. The decision, I had to lion in 1998 and whose scholars hail from all think about the kind matching gift challenge over the world, includof an additional $2.5 ing Iran and Zimbabwe, of person I am and million motivated nearand their interests and want to be. I want to ly 470 other alumni to experiences range from contribute, the program working in legislative use my J.D. to effect has returned to its branches; to working on original level of support. children’s issues, houssome positive changes Gifts from the John Ben ing issues, AIDS policy, in the world. Snow Memorial Trust and immigration; to orand the Andrew W. Melganizing women worklon Foundation also reers in India. vitalized the program. Consider RTK recipDiana Reddy “One of the great ient Diana Reddy, who benefits I got from bewas an organizer with ing a Root-Tilden ScholStanford’s Student Laar was the community of scholars it creates. bor Action Coalition and worked on unionTo have just a few rather than a full compleization efforts in her hometown of Houston. ment of scholars, it seemed to me would She graduated with distinction in 2003 from diminish the effectiveness of the program,” Stanford, where she majored in anthropolosays Kern, president of Kern Consulting. gy and went on to earn an M.A. in sociology. “Full scholarship takes an enormous pressure “In making this decision, I had to think off of the students.” about the kind of person I am and want Incoming scholars agree. “I was really to be,” she says. “I want to use my law denervous, even with loan repayment progree to effect some positive changes in the grams,” says Carrie Johnson, a 2002 magna world, and I think the Root-Tilden-Kern procum laude graduate of Duke University. gram, above any other program at any other Johnson’s interests include tax policies law school, can give me the tools to do that.” that redistribute income and financing for —Tamar Schreibman
Gaul, the enforcement section chief of the Investment Protection Bureau and Winters’ then-boss. “In addition to his legal skills, which are very good, he has a keen sense of right and wrong.” The only child of a lawyer, Kathleen, and Ray, a University of Miami psychology professor, Winters grew up in the mixedincome Miami suburb of Kendall. A 1996 Clinton presidential campaign volunteer and ’99 political science graduate of Johns Hopkins University, he is committed to public service, a value instilled by his mentor, renowned Johns Hopkins political science professor Milton Cummings. As a college senior, Winters launched, directed and raised money for a middle-school mentoring program, which still continues today. “Craig has an incredible amount of energy,” says William Tiefenwerth, director of the Hopkins’ Center for Social Concern.
“Our students got interested [in mentoring] because of Craig’s personality and his ability to market the program.” After earning a masters in tax policy in 2001 from Oxford University—“impressive, but not to employers,” the former Marshall Scholar quips—Winters worked in politics on a Massachusetts gubernatorial primary and even for former Senator Gary Hart as he considered a 2004 presidential candidacy. With his prodigious energy, the hard-todistract Winters should easily make good on a two-book deal he signed last June with Knopf. The first book, which he is taking the fall semester off to write, will probe Spitzer’s effect on the stock, mutual fund and insurance industries and is expected to be published in mid-2006. His second, on how the super-rich influence politics, taxes and society, may even require an additional semester off. —Kathleen Maloney THE LAW SCHOOL