About Glenn Kaplan, author of Evil Inc

During two decades as an ad agency creative director, Glenn Kaplan worked on campaigns for dozens of Fortune 500 companies, strategizing with their top executives about how to sell everything from camcorders to soft drinks, mutual funds to baby shampoo, and, most importantly, how to sell the public image of the corporations themselves. From power breakfasts with investment bankers to corner offices of the CEOs, Kaplan has been there with the bold-face names of business; he knows the people, the landscape, and all its inner workings.

He began his corporate career working at Foote, Cone & Belding and went on to become a creative director at several advertising agencies, including Geer; DuBois; Lintas: New York; Ammirati Puris Lintas; and Lowe Lintas. Since 2001, Glenn has been in charge of branding and advertising as the creative director of Barnes & Noble Booksellers, a company whose mission, culture, and values he shares and admires.

Glenn’s first novel, All For Money, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 1993. For his first non-fiction book, The Big Time: How Success Really Works in 14 Top Business Careers, he interviewed over 350 top executives about how they made it to the top, how they stay there, and how they feel about their success. Both books received critical acclaim from Glamour, Los Angeles Times, Advertising Age, Publishers Weekly, Chicago Tribune, and Fortune 500 CEOs. An observation from one of the brilliant executives he interviewed for The Big Time became the core plot of Evil Inc (Forge, 7/2007).

Glenn has spoken at Harvard Business School and even appeared on TV’s Merv Griffin Show. He graduated from Bowdoin College, where he double-majored in English and Art, and also attended Smith College and studied art in Florence, Italy. He is fluent in French and Italian and once worked in the art world at a major gallery, where he painted Calder mobiles under the direction of Alexander Calder. He was born and raised in Portland, Maine, and resides in New York City with his wife and son.