H. Christopher Whittle (born August 24, 1947) is an American entrepreneur who has founded four companies in the fields of education and media, and was the CEO of each.
Whittle Communications, a 1,000-person magazine, television, and book-publishing firm, was listed by Advertising Age as one of the 100 largest U.S. media companies in the 1990s.
One of his first jobs was delivering newspapers, and he later became a high-school stringer and writer for the local Etowah Enterprise, and for two of the region's dailies, the Chattanooga Times and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
He was also elected the student body president of Etowah High School, and, after graduation, attended the University of Tennessee (UT) in Knoxville.
[5] While at UT, he also was an in-state staff member running youth operations for United States Senator Howard Baker.
In the fall of 1969, Whittle attended Columbia University Law School but dropped out to embark on a self-styled “gap” year, where his world travels took him to Greenland, Mexico, North Africa, Afghanistan, Iran, India, Nepal, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Japan.
Whittle has been criticized, including by Jonathan Knee, a Columbia Business School professor and author of Class Clowns: How the Smartest Investors Lost Billions in Education, for large expenditures at his companies.
The school still faces several lawsuits from multiple vendors and its landlord alleging nonpayment of dues and rent dating back to 2019.
In October 2010 he received an "accomplished alumnus" award from the University of Tennessee, his alma mater, where he has funded more than 180 full scholarships.