He now serves in a leadership capacity for two of the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation's international development initiatives, which are at the forefront of non-governmental organizations in addressing global health and environmental issues.

During his college years at Brown University, Magaziner was one of the two architects of the "New Curriculum", a liberal academic approach which eliminates core requirements outside of the concentration the student pursues.

After two years, Magaziner left the program without earning a degree to organize protest rallies against the Vietnam War—at one point in cooperation with actress Vanessa Redgrave.

These reforms included starting an agricultural cooperative, supporting liberal candidates for city council, strengthening the union movement, and printing a progressive town newspaper.

Throughout his consulting career, Magaziner's client list has included General Electric, Corning Glass, the Governments of Ireland and Sweden and other high-tech manufacturing and health care companies.

The former, co-authored with future Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, laid out a plan for U.S. industrial policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and received critical acclaim.

The Silent War, co-authored with Providence Journal columnist Mark Patinkin, tells the story of international business competition in the early 1990s, and Magaziner's experiences in dealing with different countries' relationships to their corporate base.

Brad DeLong, Deputy Treasury Secretary for the Clinton administration at the time, argues that Magaziner's failures stemmed from having a background in management consulting instead of policy: "A management consultant's principal goal is to win a debate in front of his employer ... by making intellectual arguments, controlling the flow of information..., [and] walling-off potential adversaries from the process ... You develop a policy by forming a large coalition ... Then you have a large group of people who are enthusiastic about the proposal: they will go out and make your arguments for you.

"[4] Magaziner was court ordered to pay $285,864 to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons,[5] in 1997 by a federal judge for alleged cover up of whether the Task Force to Reform Health Care hired non-governmental employees and therefore had to release documents from their strategic deliberations upon public request.