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David Bradley made a fortune in the 1980’s and 90’s in the burgeoning field of business intelligence: packaged research, industry forecasts, and advisory resources available to companies as part of a membership package. The model worked, and in 1997 Bradley sold his share in the two major companies that operated on the membership model, The Corporate Executive Board and the Advisory Board Company for more than $300 million.
After selling the Advisory Board Companies Bradley, then only 44, decided to embark on a second career in an industry he had long admired: publishing. In 1997 he purchased The National Journal, a boutique political and policy magazine with a small but highly influential readership. But the big splash came in 1999, when Bradley purchased the venerable Atlantic Monthly from Mort Zuckerman for $10 million.
Bradley immediately set about staffing the monthly magazine with some of the best journalists in the business, luring talent away from other magazines by offering his writers some of the highest salaries in the industry.
Bradley developed a reputation for going to great lengths in order to hire the writers he wanted: one of the best examples is the case of New Yorker writer Jeffrey Goldberg, in which Bradley sent ponies to Goldberg’s house in order to entertain his children.
Today, thanks almost entirely to Bradley’s efforts, The Atlantic is home to writers like James Fallows, Christopher Hitchens, blogger Andrew Sullivan and until 2009, Ross Douthat, who left The Atlantic to become the youngest columnist ever hired by The New York Times.
Despite early assurances that Bradley would keep the newly acquired Atlantic Monthly headquartered in Boston, Mass., where it had been published since 1857, the new owner decided to move the magazine to Washington after 6 years, in 2005, and install its staff in the offices of the historic Watergate building at 600 New Hampshire Avenue, NW. The move from Boston to Washington shocked the publishing world, but to those closest to Bradley, it came as little surprise.
The son of devout Christian Scientists, Bradley is a native Washingtonian, and speaks frequently of his love for the city. As a child, Bradely attended the Sidwell Friends School, later serving as an intern in the Nixon White House before earning a J.D. from Georgetown Law School. He left Washington only long enough to attend Swarthmore College and Harvard Business School.
One of most important milestones of Bradley’s time at the Corporate Executive Board was his courtship of and marriage to his wife, Katherine. Nee Brittain, Katherine Bradley was a former intern at The Corporate Executive Board, and she and David have been married for nearly twenty-five years and have three teenage sons.
Since 1994, Katherine has been at the helm of the CityBridge Foundation, the philanthropic arm of David Bradley’s fortune. The foundation currently focuses of educational pilot programs in and around Washington, D.C., as well as programs that foster community engagement within the city.
Known for their gracious manners and good senses of humor, David and Katherine Bradley are among the most generous and visible players on Washington’s philanthropic landscape. Katherine has chaired nearly every major gala in the city at least once, and her and David’s names appear on countless dinner programs throughout the social season.
In addition to the big ticket events, the Bradleys regularly entertain, giving book parties at their house (like a recent one for Katherine’s best friend, Mary Haft, to celebrate the release of her coffee table book about Nantucket), pre-gala cocktail parties for big donors, and off-the-record salon dinners at The Atlantic offices that pair senior lawmakers with the city’s media elite.
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