The Man Who Saved the NEA

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Prestigious Award

And just as he worries that poetry has become too rarified, he thinks business, too, has become overly quantitative. To his mind, the absence of creative thinking in business is a crisis for corporations today.

"When we're 15 years old we do all these various things—sports, music, this, that, and the other. But as we get older we keep narrowing," says Gioia, "By keeping the creative part of my mind alive and alert and by essentially seeing society and humanity through a different perspective, I was able to see business problems and address them differently."

Although Gioia has had creative success—his 2002 collection of poems, Interrogations at Noon, won the prestigious American Book Award—he retains the manner and comportment of a businessman. Dashing around Washington most days in a typical blue suit, white shirt and tie, hair cut short, he could easily be mistaken for any corporate executive in for a day of lobbying, though he has a lot more to say.

He's as happy debating the nitty gritty of how to gain momentum for the Big Read as he is talking jazz with a gathering of state art councils, or watching a Shakespeare skit at a fund-raiser five seats down from first lady Laura Bush. He has a knack for peppering his comments with everything from classical quotations to the intricacies of the dialects in which Spanish television is broadcast, yet he never seems pompous.

Good Data

He's also happy to poke fun at himself and his erudite interests, telling with relish the story of the great distress of his sons Ted, 17, and Mike, 13, when they learned he had been at a gathering of high-achieving Latinos at the White House with a bunch of famous baseball players, almost none of whose names he could recall.

Gioia's efforts may be paying off for the NEA, but he's not backing down on his one-man marketing campaign. He never visits a member of Congress without a list of grants made in his or her district and a printout of every high school there that uses the NEA's educational materials.

He likes to mention the names of teachers who requested those materials, since young Hill staffers often recognize them. "Good business decisions are made with good data," Gioia explains. He also makes sure the product is part of the pitch, often opening these meetings by reading a poem of his own or another writer's.

The data, combined with the NEA's focus on programs with patriotic themes, helped increase the NEA's budget to $124.4 million last year. That's up 7.5% from the level when Gioia came in.

Boeing Bravos

Even more surprising is that Gioia will get the same amount this year under Bush's proposed budget—even though the budget includes $183 billion in nonmilitary cuts over the next five years. The House of Representatives has approved an additional $5 million for the NEA, though a final budget is still not set.

Last month, President Bush declared his intention to renominate Gioia for another four years, though he probably will step down when Bush's term ends. And it's not only the politicians who like what Gioia has done so far. Companies like Boeing and phone giant Verizon Communications (VZ) are embracing the chance to work with the NEA.

After several years of success on Operation Homecoming, "we trust them so much, we give them our money and say, 'Just tell us what you're doing with it,'" says Pat Riddle, director of branding and advertising for Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. And the artists who continue to benefit admire him as well. Ben Donnenberg, artistic director of Shakespeare Festival/LA, a grant beneficiary, describes the NEA as "alive now. It was a moribund agency, and he has transformed it magically." Well, more methodically than magically, but in the NEA's case a little artistic license is always in order.

Byrnes is a senior writer for BusinessWeek in New York.