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Ethicist Michael Josephson, Founder of "Character Counts"Michael Josephson's Biography

Michael Josephson had successful careers in business, law and education before launching the non-profit Joseph & Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics, which he named for his parents. Through the Institute, based in Los Angeles, California, Mr. Josephson founded the CHARACTER COUNTS! Coalition, a partnership of more than 500 educational and youth-serving organizations that together can reach millions of young people. The Coalition helps kids live safer, more responsible lives by providing character-building teaching materials and programs based on core values called the "Six Pillars of Character": trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. The Coalition’s projects include the children’s videos "Kids for Character" and "Choices Counts!," the American Youth Character Awards, the Character Development Seminars multi-day training course, CHARACTER COUNTS! Sports, and American Character Week (which promotes service projects in commemoration of the September 11 tragedies). The President, the United States Congress, most state legislatures, and 500 communities, school districts and youth-services organizations support the Coalition’s nonpartisan, nonsectarian approach to character education. They have declared the third week in October "National CHARACTER COUNTS! Week." In recognition of his work with CHARACTER COUNTS!, Mr. Josephson was awarded the America’s Award (for integrity) in 1996 by Ronald Reagan. In 2000, he was named to the Bush-Chaney Transition Advisory Committee as an expert on nonpartisan character education.

Through his programs and commentary, Mr. Josephson has become one of the country’s most sought-after teachers and speakers on the subjects of ethics and character. His Gabriel Award-winning radio commentaries air daily on CBS’s KNX News Radio in southern California, around the world on American Forces Radio and on stations in several other major cities. He conducts more than 50 programs per year for leaders in education, business, government, journalism, law and the nonprofit community. He has worked with numerous state and local officials, top editors, leading jurists, senior civilian defense officials, military and police command officers and top executives at such companies as: 3M, Johnson & Johnson, Bank of America, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Levi-Strauss, Pacific Telesis, State Farm Insurance and Union Pacific Railroad. His services range from confidential consultations for such organizations as the CIA and the FBI to multiday community workshops. He has designed comprehensive ethics-training programs (for instance, for the 120,000 employees and executives of the Internal Revenue Service) and has written codes of ethics for a number of public and private-sector organizations.

His ideas and the work of the Institute have been featured on ABC’s "Prime Time Live," "Nightline" and "World News Tonight", NBC’s "Dateline" and "The Today Show"; "CBS This Morning" and the "CBS Evening News With Dan Rather", PBS’s "Bill Moyers’ World of Ideas", CNN; and C-SPAN. Mr. Josephson also has been profiled in Time, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor and Der Spiegel. He has been published in dozens of leading publications, including: the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Orange County Register and The Hartford Courant. He is the author of You Don’t Have To Be Sick To Get Better! (2001) and The Best Is Yet To Come (2002), co-author of Parenting to Build Character in Your Teen (2001) and co-editor of The Power of Character (1998, updated in paperback and hardcover, 2004).

A graduate of UCLA and the UCLA School of Law, Mr. Josephson had a 20-year career as a law professor and businessman. In 1985 he sold his legal publishing company and national bar exam preparation chain, left academia and devoted himself to the Institute, which he serves today as president without salary. All fees honoraria from his programs go directly to the Institute, which is overseen by an independent, volunteer board of governors.

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Site updated: 07 Feb 2006
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