Michael Warder established The Warder Consultancy in August 2014 to serve in areas including advancement, public affairs, public issues, and media relations. In April 2005 he was appointed Vice Chancellor of Pepperdine University and Senior Fellow of its graduate School of Public Policy.  Pepperdine is a nationally and internationally ranked university headquartered in Malibu, California with campuses in Europe, South America, and Asia. As Vice Chancellor, Mr. Warder raised, largely from new sources, more than $20 million dollars for the university until his retirement in July of 2014. He created a highly successful series of seminars for donors with key professors in a variety of disciplines on vital topics. He located and developed relations with a donor who established a university-wide institute that will enrich the learning of students for years. He also developed a global advancement capability resulting in endowments that will serve faculty and students for years to come. He created and marketed highly successful donor tours to China and India and in 23 trips to Asia and the Middle East identified key alums and donors, including several seven-figure donors.

 

Prior to coming to Pepperdine, Mr. Warder was Executive Director of The Southern California Children’s Scholarship Fund (2001-2005).  He was responsible for development, publicity, and the administration of the $12 million program resulting in 9,200 annual scholarships for low income students. Mr. Warder has held a variety of executive positions with leading public policy research corporations. These included Vice President for Development for The Claremont Institute (1995-2001) in California; Executive Vice President and Treasurer of The Rockford Institute in Illinois (1985-1995); Executive Vice President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC (1983-84); and Director of Administration of The Heritage Foundation (1980-’83), also in Washington, DC.

 

In the course of his work, Mr. Warder has written newspaper columns on a variety of topics for hundreds of newspapers including: The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Times, San Francisco Chronicle, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Sun Times, Houston Chronicle, San Diego Union Tribune, and many others. While in Illinois he was a weekly columnist for the Rockford Register Star (1991-92), and was for four years an award-winning weekly commentator for WNIJ, the NPR affiliate for Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin. He has appeared as a guest on a wide variety of television and radio programs including: Fox’s O’Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, and News; ABC’s Politically Incorrect, MSNBC’s Internight, WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, KCET’s Life & Times, PBS’s Frontline, CBS News, and many others. He created, produced, and hosted a weekly public affairs program, Stateline Newsmakers, in Rockford. In the course of his career he has organized, marketed and led delegations to the former Soviet Union, the Baltics, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Rome, Jerusalem, China, and India.  He was a delegate to the 2013 APEC meeting in Bali.

 

With his biography in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the World, Mr. Warder is a member of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Council for National Policy, and the Philadelphia Society. He serves on the Executive Committee of the Vijay Amritraj Foundation and is a Board member of the American Civil Rights Institute. He is a 1968 graduate of Stanford University with a degree in Political Science. Now residing in Upland, California, he is married to the former Cheryl Gilkerson. They have three grown children.