David Kissinger

Vocation

Notable

Family

American writer and businessman; son of Henry Kissinger. He began his career as a free-lance writer and eventually became a vice president with Disney’s television network division. David’s mother and famous father, both Jewish German immigrants, split politically and emotionally when he was three. He lived with his mother and stepfather in liberal Cambridge, Massachusetts and spent summers and vacations with his dad, traveling the globe with his work. He was with the senior Kissinger during the final days of the Nixon presidency. His appearance is strikingly similar to his father’s and his diplomacy often reminiscent. David was a history major at Yale where he graduated in 1983. After graduation, he went to England to be a speechwriter for a friend of his father, Tory MP George Walden, for a year. He returned to the U.S. to attend a New York law school, thinking he might enter politics. He spent a year as a clerk in the First Circuit Court of Appeals and a year in private practice, and discovered that where he enjoyed the public policy side of the law, the drudgery of the field did not sustain his interest. David started free-lance writing while at the law firm and eventually quit the firm to join Variety magazine in Los Angeles. There he met Dean Valentine of Disney who offered him a job in early 1992. By 1995 he was vice president of development at Disney television’s network division. He made a later observation that Hollywood "was Washington with palm trees," both communities obsessed with power, work and interaction.