Charlie Euchner has had a varied career—or careers (plural). But each one, inevitably, brings him back to writing and teaching.
From his early days as a journalist to his recent adventures as an author and the developer of a brain-based system for mastering writing, Charlie has always been fascinated with the process and power of the written word.
“Writing is the ultimate superpower, no matter what you do,” he says. “Even if you dislike writing, it’s still a path to discovery and influence, creativity and efficiency. There’s a saying: ‘He who keeps the minutes, sets the agenda.’ And it’s true.”
Besides the core purpose of a business or organization—making software, managing supply chains, crunching numbers, settling disputes, and whatever else—writing and communication gives you more power than anything else. Writing offers the blueprint, the fuel, and the purpose for everything we do.
See this recent interview on the business publication Go Solo.
Clients
Euchner has worked with a wide range of organizations. Besides teaching at Yale, Columbia, and SUNY-Purchase, Euchner has taught his writing seminars at Axa, Chevron, NetCom Learning, Amneal Pharmaceuticals, Jarrard Phillips Cate & Hancock, the National Education Association, HealthFirst, Sandler Training, Gen Re, Pitney Bowes, Vanderbilt University, various literary festivals and schools, and independent writing groups across the U.S.
Professional Background
A graduate of Vanderbilt University (B.A.) and the Johns Hopkins University (M.A., Ph.D.), Charles Euchner began his career as a staff writer for Education Week.
At Education Week, Euchner covered technology in education, the teaching profession, and state and local politics. You can see a couple of his favorite pieces here and here and here.
After graduate school, he taught political science. Itching to “not just understand but also change things,” he coordinated the City of Boston’s longterm planning process before returning to academe. He was the founding director of Harvard’s Rappaport Institute. All this time he published books, reports, articles on public policy and planning.
Then he made a big break. He decided to devote himself wholly to writing. He has written acclaimed books on baseball, the civil rights movement, and writing. He is in the process of publishing books on Woodrow Wilson, political activism in the U.S, and the challenges of teaching and learning in “the age of the screen.”
Euchner also has a strong background in business writing. He was a case writer and editor at the Yale School of Management. His case studies explored the federal Corrupt Practices Act, the battle between Apple and Samsung, the Manchester United Football Club, Herman Miller, scandals at the general Services Administration, and AARP, and an amaranth producer in Mexico, among other topics.
Euchner has taught writing at three major universities—Yale, Columbia, and SUNY-Purchase. He has developed books for teaching writing in high school and college. He has also authored a guide to the “six traits,” a system for teaching writing in K-12 education.
As all this was going on, Euchner developed the only comprehensive brain-based system for mastering writing in all fields. The Elements of Writing mixes and matches 79 simple and intuitive skills and hacks. This system works because it understands “what the brain wants—and what it doesn’t.”
Education
Charles Euchner, a native of Huntington, N.Y., earned a B.A. in political science at Vanderbilt University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the Johns Hopkins University. At Johns Hopkins, his focus was urban politics and policy. He wrote his M.A. thesis on the politics of sewerage construction at the turn of the century (published in a different form here). His Ph.D. thesis explored the politics of stadium construction in modern cities (published in a different form here).
