Kevin O'Keefe started to research and write his widely-acclaimed nonfiction national bestseller, "The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen," while continuing an accomplished career in business management and marketing.  

The book, Kevin's first, has aroused the curiosity of average and not-so-average citizens alike.  Indeed, before he was elected, U.S. President Barack Obama wrote of his eagerness to study the "experiences and discoveries" of Kevin's journey.  After its publication, "The Average American" was optioned by Fox Television Studios.        

As an independent writer, Kevin has been published in a variety of newspapers and national magazines, most recently The New York Times and ESPN The Magazine.  

A popular guest lecturer and talk show guest, Kevin has been interviewed on more than 150 television and radio programs about "The Average American," including such national outlets as "CBS Evening News," "Good Morning America," "Martha," "The Early Show," "FOX & Friends," "Anderson Cooper 360," "CNN Live," "Showbiz Tonight," and NPR's "Talk of the Nation."  

"The Average American," published by PublicAffairs, has also been featured in The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and many other American publications and has been the subject of national news coverage in Argentina, Chile, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and other countries.  The book's regional success includes its ranking sixth on The Patriot Ledger's "South Shore Bestsellers" list for the Boston-to-Cape Cod metropolitan area.  It is in multiple hardcover printings. 

Business

Before moving to New York from Pacific Palisades, California, Kevin was a managing director and the head of West Coast offices for Quintus, the international entertainment and sports agency now part of IMG.  The company had acquired Riprock, the Los Angeles-based agency Kevin had founded three and a half years before the merger. 

Kevin has served as a consultant for more than a dozen Fortune 500 companies and has worked on marketing campaigns for a diversity of prominent consumer brands such as adidas, Alamo, AOL, American Movie Classics, Amstel Light, Budget, Cartoon Network, Coors, Crest, Dr Pepper, EA Sports, ESPN, Eurosport, Gatorade, Heineken, IBM, Mercedes-Benz, MetLife, Movado, Outback Steakhouse, Prudential, Reebok, Snapple, Sprint, Virgin Atlantic and Volvo.  He has held several high-profile management posts in the professional sports industry and has managed business in auto racing, baseball, basketball, bowling, cycling, football, golf, hot air ballooning, polo, road running, soccer, tennis, track and field, and water skiing.  Kevin's political work has included serving on behalf of the African National Congress as the marketing communications director for Nelson Mandela's historic American tour.    

Kevin has been a fundraiser for numerous charitable organizations, including as the director of the Pete Sampras Classic, a star-studded celebrity golf tournament in California to benefit the Tim & Tom Gullikson Foundation, which provides support and assistance for brain-tumor patients and their families, and producer of the Maxim/ESQ Urban Open in New York City, a golf tournament - the first ever played on the streets of Manhattan - to benefit Sehorn's Corner, which aids underprivileged single-parent families.  Each event was the largest fundraiser to date for its charity.  While a California resident, Kevin was an advisor and fundraiser for the non-profit Governor's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports under then-chairman Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Kevin's charity work outside the U.S. includes projects for UNICEF and Nelson Mandela Children's Fund. 

Since his introduction to international business at age 25 - when he began work in Washington, D.C., for ProServ, then the world's second-largest sports management, marketing and media company behind IMG - Kevin has managed business projects in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Monaco, and South Africa. 

While at ProServ, Kevin also successfully recruited U.S. athletes to the agency for agent representation, including Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams during Williams' Super Bowl MVP season and Tatu, then the most popular U.S. soccer player.  Kevin later joined ProServ's New York City office where he worked closely with many marquee clients, including legendary humanitarian and tennis champion Arthur Ashe.  After Ashe's death, Kevin proudly served as a member of the Arthur Ashe Humanitarian Award selection committee and as executive producer of the annual awards show for the women's international pro tennis tour, a benefit for the National Junior Tennis League program co-founded by Ashe.         

Kevin departed ProServ to work in New York City for Cohn & Wolfe, a public relations agency within communications giant Young & Rubicam, where he supervised some of the largest corporate public relations accounts in sports.  During his three years at Cohn & Wolfe, the agency climbed from sixth to second in sports account billings among all reporting U.S. public relations firms.  Kevin was recognized for his media expertise at the annual inside PR Creativity in Public Relations Awards. 

After Cohn & Wolfe, Kevin served as vice president of event marketing for The Vanderbilt Agency in New York, and then joined the ATP, the men's international pro tennis tour, based in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.  On Racquet magazine's former list of the most powerful people in tennis, Kevin ranked among the top three executives of the men's tour.  With Grammy Award-winning singer-composer Seal, Kevin created “Bring It On,” the celebrated international promotional television campaign for the men's tour that "brought tennis firmly into the arena of entertainment" according to Tennis Week.  He became known in the tennis industry as as a pioneer in strategically promoting tennis through Hollywood partnerships, in part because prominent entertainment outlets - People magazine, Daily Variety, ESPN and E! Entertainment Television among them - have reported of his role.  After his ATP success, Kevin was the tournament director for the men's pro tennis event in Newport Beach, California.     

Kevin started his post-collegiate career at Southern University in Louisiana, where he was the athletics communications and marketing chief.  At Southern, the nation's largest historically black university, he worked with the athletics director to create a statewide radio network, an inaugural community outreach program for Baton Rouge, and many other successful initiatives.  Kevin worked with Detroit Mayor Coleman Young and Young's foundation to establish the Coleman A. Young Classic, a Detroit football game between Southern and Tennessee State to raise college scholarship funds for black students.  Before Kevin departed Southern for ProServ, Louisiana's State-Times declared, "He's done a remarkable job."  While with Southern, Kevin separately served as an on-site media liaison for the United States Olympic Committee.

Kevin began his management and marketing career in graduate school as an intern with the North American Soccer League team the Chicago Sting and later, for one season during the Major Indoor Soccer League's television heyday, he served as the MISL's director of communications.     

Additonal Honors and Background     

Kevin was born in Norman, Oklahoma, and soon after his family moved to Mansfield, Connecticut, where was an all-America athlete his senior year in high school.  

At Auburn University, Kevin majored in journalism.  He served as the sports editor of the school newspaper, and earned multiple Auburn Scholar Athlete and All-Southeastern Conference honors and the College Sports Information Directors of America's prestigious Best in the Nation - Division A editing award.  For two summers before graduating from Auburn, Kevin was a reporter for the Norwich Bulletin, a daily newspaper in Connecticut. 

While earning his master's degree in sports administration from Ohio University, Kevin competed as a professional runner for shoe sponsor Team KangaROOS.  Kevin has broken nine minutes for two miles and his fastest 10,000-meter time, set at the Penn Relays, is 29:41.9.  While he was director of corporate communications at ProServ, Kevin finished the New York City Marathon in 2:38:27, the fastest of his four marathons.

In December 1999, the Hartford Courant named Kevin to its Connecticut's Best of the Century list.  Since 2007 in Charleston, South Carolina, he has been a participant and speaker at Renaissance Weekend, the invitation-only retreat for innovative leaders.  In 2008, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Connecticut's E.O. Smith High School, Kevin was one of the ten individuals inducted into the inaugural class of the school's Hall of Fame.

Family

Since 2001, Kevin and his wife Kathy have resided in the Murray Hill section of midtown Manhattan in New York City.  They have three young children, Christina and twins Ava and Will.