Neil Howe, best-selling author and national speaker, is a renowned authority on generations in America. He gives readers and audiences powerful insights into who today's generation are, what motivates them as consumers and workers, and how they will shape our national future. He is a great choice for any forward-looking organization that wants to grasp the big picture. Howe's broadly cyclical perspective-oriented around familiar generational life stories-will put "the long term" into a stunning yet personal focus that will not soon be forgotten.

A historian, economist, and demographer, Howe is a founding partner of the consulting firm LifeCourse Associates. He is a marketing, personnel, and government affairs consultant to corporate and nonprofit clients, and has spoken and written extensively on the collective personalities of today's generations-who they are, what motivates them, and how they will shape America's future. He is also a recognized authority on global aging, long-term fiscal policy, and migration. His current titles include: public policy adviser to the Blackstone Group, senior adviser to the Concord Coalition, and senior associate to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Howe has coauthored several books on generations with William Strauss, all best sellers widely used by businesses, colleges, government agencies, and political leaders of both parties. Their first book, Generations (1991) is a history of America told as a sequence of generational biographies. Generations, said Newsweek, is "a provocative, erudite, and engaging analysis of the rhythms of American life." Vice President Al Gore called it "the most simulating book on American history that I have ever read" and sent a copy to every member of Congress. Newt Gingrich called it "an intellectual tour de force." Howe's second book on generations, 13th Gen (1993) remains the best-selling nonfiction book ever written about Generation X. Of Howe and Strauss's third book, he Fourth Turning (1997) Dan Yankelovich said, "Immensely stimulating...We will never be able to think about history in the same way." The Boston Globe wrote, "If Howe and Strauss are right, they will take their place among the great American prophets."

Strauss and Howe's 5th book, Millennials Rising (2000) has been widely quoted in the media for its insistence that today's new crop of teens and kids are very different from Generation X, and, on the whole, doing much better than most adults think. "Forget Generation X-and Y, for that matter," says The Washington Post, "The authors make short work of most media myths that shape our perceptions of kids these days." LifeCourse Associates has since released several application books on Millennials-including a Recruiting Millennials Handbook for the United States Army (2001), Millennials Go To College (2003) and Millennials and the Pop Culture (2005). Neil Howe's work with Millennials in colleges and in the military was recently featured by CBS' 60 MINUTES. Millennials Go To College (second edition) and Millennials in the Workplace are soon to be released.

Previously, with Peter G. Peterson, Howe coauthored On Borrowed Time (1989; reissued 2004), a pioneering call for budgetary reform. According to Harvard's Martin Feldstein, former Chairman of the President's Council on Economic Advisors, "This book should be read by everyone who wants to understand how government spending can be controlled."

Howe's articles have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, American Demographics, USA Weekend, and other national publications. He has drafted several Social Security reform plans and testified on entitlements many times before Congress. He has written extensively on budget policy and aging and on attitudes toward economic growth, social progress, and stewardship. He coauthors the "Facing Facts" faxletter for the Concord Coalition, an NTUF chartbook series, Entitlements and the Aging of America, numerous studies for CSIS (including the Global Aging Initiative's Aging Vulnerability Index and The Graying of the Middle Kingdon: The Economics and Demographics of Retirement Policy in China).

Howe grew up in California, received his B.A. at U.C. Berkeley, studied abroad in France and Germany, and later earned graduate degrees in economics (M.A., 1978) and history (M.Phil., 1979) from Yale University. He currently lives in Great Falls, Virginia, with his wife, Simona, and two Millennial children, Giorgia and Nathaniel.

GENERATIONS-KEY TO THE FUTURE

To understand America's long-term direction, don't obsess over the daily headlines. Look at the big picture. Look at where the generations are heading. Howe takes your audience on an entertaining yet illuminating grand tour through generations in America-back through history and forward into the future. Get to know each of today's generations: from G.I. "senior citizens" and Silent Generation "grand-daddios" to Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, and the now-rising Millennial Generation of youths. Find out who they are. Where they come from. How they differ in behavior, in attitudes, and in the messages they respond to as managers, workers, and consumers. Most important, learn what history teaches about how each of them will grow older-and where they will steer the nation.

MILLENNIALS RISING

Surveys and news clippings about "Generation Y" are not enough to inform you about today's kids, teens, and new college grads. Let Howe vastly expand your audience's understanding of America's newest generation-to begin with, by explaining why they don't like the name "Generation Y"! Learn about the good-news revolution in youth behavior-from crime and sex to drugs and educational achievement. Find out what's happening in families, schools, and politics to shape this generation so differently from Xers or Boomers. Explore the new Millennial trend toward optimism, teamwork, safety, planning, helicopter parents, and what the New York Times calls "neotraditionalism." Howe explains it all.

GENERATIONS IN THE WORKPLACE

In today's typical organization, Boomers and Gen-Xers have trouble understanding each another-and neither generation knows what to do about the rising young Millennials just coming out of high school and college. Because all of these generations look at life and work differently, they often develop a distrustful or unproductive relationship. Howe will explain what is going on. Why Boomers talk about "careers," Xers "jobs." Why Boomers favor depth, Xers breadth. Why Boomers see work as a values statement (how I live my life), Xers as a transaction (how I get a life). He will also take a fresh look at Millennials, whose sense of specialness, closeness to parents, and need for structure are all mystifying employers. As always, Howe will explain what the best companies are doing to get it right.

RHYTHMS OF HISTORY

The coming century, say most futurists, will follow familiar straight lines-toward ever more individualism, globalism, social fragmentation, and high-tech, high-touch glitz. Nonsense, says Howe. Why won't this happen? Because history is nonlinear. He explains how the story of America is governed by a recurring cycle of four "Turning," each driven by generational aging and each lasting about the length of a phase of life. Find out why the transition to the "Fourth Turning" will probably occur within the next decade-and why, when it does, history will once again turn a corner and leave today's trendy forecasts in history's dustbin. Howe's unforgettable talk, which is now in huge demand post-911, will energize your audience by getting them to expand their minds and think creatively about the future.

GLOBAL AGING

Over the next thirty years, falling birthrates and rising lifespans will cause the world's population to grow much older--with seismic consequences. The pop culture will gray. Economies will grow less, save less, and shift toward services. Families will become narrower (with fewer siblings and cousins) but longer (with more great-grandparents). The growing cost of senior entitlements will force painful fiscal choices, including new pressure to hike taxes, ration health care, raise the retirement age, or boost immigration. From geopolitics to infrastructure to financial markets, global aging will change our lives. Let Howe explore this future with your audience in a fascinating, fact-filled overview of this looming demographic transformation.