Donald M. Stinson

At the age of 17, Don Stinson accidentally landed a job in the White House during Watergate, the largest political scandal in American history.

A truly insignificant member of the Nixon White House staff, he frequently loitered outside of the Oval Office to watch it unfold. He was also a kid who did the same kind of harebrained things most teenagers do. Only steps away from the Oval Office, he fought with a foreign head of state for space in a restroom. He devised a shortcut that tripped countless alarms and summoned an agitated band of Secret Service agents. He spilled ice water on Frank Sinatra.

And that was just the small stuff.

Don's best-selling memoir, Downstairs at the White House, is a fascinating, uproariously funny, insider's view of events that shook America to its core. His speech to your group delivers more of the same.

Your audience will be captivated by incredible stories richly decorated with presidents, first ladies, and celebrities ... and walk away still laughing about the awkward, pimple-faced teen who interacted with them all.

• For audiences primarily interested in the Watergate era, it's an eye-popping, first-hand account of an earth-shattering moment in American history.

• For business audiences, the speech also serves up powerful messages about the value of taking calculated risks. They'll remember the lessons "They can't eat you" and "Walk into an Oval Office every now and then even if you're not invited" for a long time to come.

Don Stinson spent 30 years in the newspaper industry, including more than a decade as the senior sales and marketing executive of the Newspaper Division of Gannett Co., Inc. (best known for its flagship, USA TODAY), then the nation's largest newspaper publisher. He invented problem-solving innovations including Value Selling®, a program used by 2,000 company sales executives in the U.S. and U.K. and The Advertising Matrix®, which increased sales transactions an average of 30% in exchange for a 9% rate reduction.

In 2007, he launched a revenue strategy consultancy focused on finding solutions to sales and margin problems with math instead of added resources. The firm's successes included, but were not limited to, reversing a client's market share slide while driving a 40% net revenue gain in a key segment and defeating a competitor's 20% across-the-board price reduction while increasing the client's gross margin revenue 21%.

An honorary member of the Union of Russian Journalists, Don is also a Fellow of the Strategic Planning Society (United Kingdom), a member of the President's Society of the Nixon Library Foundation, and a member of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. He holds a B.A. from American University and credentials from M.I.T., Harvard Business School, and the Project on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Oh! One more thing! After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he worked with newspapers in Russia to establish a free and independent press. Although that didn't quite work out, he did manage to be held hostage in a smelting plant, sleep in an insane asylum guarded by sheep herders, and wrestle a goat defending a lavatory door on Russian airline Aeroflot. The goat won. As they say, that's a whole 'nother' story!