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Meet the change leaders: Scott Klug

Scott Klug
www.foley.com
David L. Nevins
By David L. NevinsOct 04, 2024
David L. Nevins
David L. Nevins serves as co-publisher of The Fulcrum. Additionally, Nevins serves as co-founder and Board Chairman of the Bridge Alliance. Nevins brings business acumen, vision and a tireless this-must-and-can-be-done zeal to the burgeoning movement to bridge divides to transform the political process. As a business leader, Nevins excels at building bridges between people and organizations from the right, left and center for civilized conversation and then action. He co-founded the Bridge Alliance because, as he says, “No matter how well managed and how well funded anyone organization is, significant political reform will not happen without an alliance to further collaborative interactions. Together we can and will raise the collective impact of all.” He is a member of the Aspen Institute Society of Fellows, with a focus on the Aspen Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership, he established and continues to work with The Nevins Democracy Leaders program at Penn State University. Nevins graduated with honors in economics from Penn State in 1969 and received an M.B.A. in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971.
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Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

After a 14-year career as an Emmy-winning reporter, Scott Klug upset a 32-year Democratic House member from Wisconsin in 1990. Despite winning four elections with an average of 63 percent of the vote, he stayed true to his term limit pledge and retired in January 1999.

But during his time in office, Klug says, he had the third most independent voting record of any member of Congress from Wisconsin in the last 50 years.

Klug now works at the law firm Foley & Lardner, where he is a public affairs director and co-chair of the firm’s federal public affairs practice. He represents a broad array of the firm’s clients in Washington and several state capitals. He is also able to draw on his time as a television reporter to help clients craft proactive media strategies, particularly when faced with crisis management challenges.

In 2013, he authored “The Alliance,” a mystery novel about religion and antiquities.

Klug has returned to the public eye to represent “Lost in the Middle” voices in a regular podcast he produces.

He is a resident of Madison, Wis., where he lives with his wife, Theresa Summers Klug. The couple has three children.

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I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Klug for the CityBiz “Meet the Change Leaders” series. Watch to learn the full extent of his democracy reform work:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

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The most recent interview of this series took place with Richard Young, the Executive Director of CivicLex, a nonprofit organization strengthening civic health in Lexington, Kentucky. In addition to leading important work in Lexington, Richard has become an evangelist for the importance of place-based democracy work, which has indisputably gained interest and attention following the 2024 general election.

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The nation’s progenitors wrestled with this very question. They drew heavily from Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who saw the social contract as a sacred covenant between citizens and their government. But they also pulled from deeper wells—the Puritan concept of the covenant community, the classical Republican tradition of civic virtue, and the Christian ideal of serving one's neighbor. These threads wove into something uniquely American: a vision of the common good that balances individual liberty with collective responsibility.

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