David Wilhelm

Wilhelm served as Head of the Steering Committee for the City of Columbus' bid to host the 2016 Democratic National Convention, and is a lifetime superdelegate to the Democratic National Committee.

Wilhelm is a founder of a newly created Ohio Appalachian Business Council and in 2010 served as co-chair of a successful statewide campaign in support of the Ohio Third Frontier. He is co-chair of the advisory council for the Voinovich School for Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University.

In 1995, Wilhelm returned to Chicago to build a successful career in business He and Kevin Conlon, a prominent labor lawyer and Democratic activist, started Wilhelm & Conlon Public Strategies (now Conlon Public Strategies) in 1998. A year later, Wilhelm moved into impact investing, founding Woodland Venture Management, and starting two venture capital funds that invest in businesses in economically challenged parts of Central Appalachia and the Great Lakes region.

Before moving to the private sector, Wilhelm ran political campaigns for candidates such as Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, and several Illinois-based Democrats, including Richard M. Daley and Paul Simon. He oversaw the day-to-day operations of the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, directed its Electoral College and political strategy, and planned the post-convention bus tour of the American heartland.

Upon his election in 1992, President Clinton nominated Wilhelm to serve as Chair of the Democratic National Committee, making Wilhelm the youngest person ever to serve in that role in either political party. As Chair, he re-established an advisory council of representatives from organized labor, and reached out to evangelical Christian voters, famously appearing before a convention of the Christian Coalition of America to a chorus of boos. Under Wilhelm's leadership, the DNC played a meaningful role in support of President Clinton's first budget proposal, which passed a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives by a single vote. But these organizational efforts were overshadowed by Clinton era controversies related to NAFTA, health care, and Congressional nervousness about the 1994 midterm elections.

In the fall of 1978, Wilhelm entered the two year Master of Public Policy program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. During the following summer, he interned in the Office of Senator Howard Metzenbaum as an assistant to the senior legislative aide on budget and tax matters. During his time at the Kennedy School, he served as a teaching fellow for classes taught in public management by Professors Steven Kelman and Jonathan Brock.

Wilhelm attended Ohio University as a National Merit Scholar, graduating in August 1977, with a BA in Government. He was named the Outstanding Undergraduate in Government that year and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. While at Ohio University, Wilhelm continued political campaigning. At the age of 19, he was the first staffer hired by the then nascent Jimmy Carter presidential campaign in the State of Ohio. He was given the assignment of recruiting delegates and alternates in each of Ohio's congressional districts for the relatively unknown Georgia Governor. His work led to the filing of a complete slate of delegates and alternates, something that Carter's opponents failed, by and large, to match, providing the Carter campaign with a strong competitive advantage in Ohio.

Wilhelm's pre-school years consisted of brief family stays in Champaign, Illinois, Lafayette, Louisiana, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while his father completed a PhD in Geography at Louisiana State University. Two sisters, Diana and Suzanne, were added to the mix and, in 1963, the Wilhelm family, now totaling five, moved to Athens, Ohio, where Wilhelm's father had accepted an offer to join the faculty of Ohio University, a position he held until his retirement 35 years later.

David Wilhelm (born October 2, 1956) is a global renewable energy developer, currently working for Hecate Energy. Formerly, Wilhelm worked in the venture capital space and as a political campaign manager; most notably serving as Campaign Manager for the 1992 U.S. Presidential campaign of Bill Clinton, and later as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

David Wilhelm was born on October 2, 1956, in Champaign, Illinois to Hubert and Constance Wilhelm, who were undergraduates at the University of Illinois at that time. Wilhelm is a first-generation American; his father is a native of Krauschwitz, Germany, and was brought to the United States as a high school aged refugee of war-torn Germany by a Brethren Church farm family living near Auburn, Illinois (about 20 miles south of Springfield).