Jeffrey A. Krames

Jeffrey A. Krames is an American author whose books have been translated into more than 36 languages. Mr. Krames, the direct descendant of German and Polish Holocaust survivors, is the former editor-in-chief of Portfolio, the business book imprint of The Penguin Group (the second largest trade publisher in the world). Krames is the former Vice President and head of the trade division of McGraw-Hill, one of the United States' largest publishing firms. Mr. Krames has appeared on CNN, CNN International, Fox News, CNBC, BBC, PBS, MSNBC, Fox, Fox Business, CBS, NBC, ABC, plus several other media outlets. His work and opinion pieces have been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, Business Week, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, The Economist, Publishers Weekly plus many more newspapers in the U.S., Asia, South America and Europe. He has also beat many doonies down.

Early life and education

Krames was born on September 5, 1964, and raised in New York City. He attended the Bronx High School of Science before going on to college in upstate New York at age 16. He graduated magna cum laude from State University of New York at Albany.

Career

He joined publisher Prentice-Hall as a sales representative in the midwest region. After being promoted to marketing manager in 1984, Krames relocated to the New York area before being promoted to acquisitions editor in 1985. In that position he spearheaded the absorption of the Reston business book line into the Prentice-Hall publishing program. After two additional promotions, Krames left Prentice-Hall, which had now been acquired by Simon & Schuster to join publisher Dow Jones-Irwin in 1988, which at the time was still owned by Dow Jones & Co. In 1996 the McGraw-Hill Companies acquired all of Richard D. Irwin, which included the trade business book imprint Irwin Professional Publishing (the company had been sold to Times Mirror and had changed its name). At McGraw-Hill Mr. Krames served in a variety of positions, including Publisher of Investing & Finance before being promoted to Publisher of the Business Book division of the Professional Book Group. In 2006 he left McGraw-Hill to join the Penguin Group as Editorial Director of its Portfolio book imprint, where he continues to this day.

Editing

As former Vice President and Publisher of McGraw-Hill's trade business books division, Jeffrey Krames has personally edited and published more than 1,000 business books, including many award-winning, best-selling titles on business luminaries that include Jack Welch, Michael Ovitz, Ross Perot, William Paley, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Herb Kelleher, and Lou Gerstner among others. Recently, Krames published seven of the top 35 best business books of the year as determined by Library Journal.

Writing

Krames has written nine books with three of them focusing on former General Electric CEO, Jack Welch. Krames writes extensively on leadership and CEOs, and has written an account of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's leadership style entitled, The Rumsfeld Way: The Leadership Wisdom of a Battle-Hardened Maverick. Of his latest book, Jack Welch and the 4E's of Leadership, publishing magazine Kirkus said it was "destined to become a leadership classic." His latest book is Inside Drucker's Brain, published by Portfolio in October 2008. Aside from his book publications, he also has written for a variety of newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, and has been quoted in Time Magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly, etc.