Philip Morris Klutznick

Philip Morris Klutznick

Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce

Philip Morris Klutznick (July 9, 1907 – August 14, 1999) was a U.S. administrator who served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce from January 9, 1980 to January 19, 1981 under President Jimmy Carter. He was a prominent leader of several Jewish organisations, including as President of the World Jewish Congress from 1977 to 1979.

He attended the University of Kansas at Lawrence and the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and received an LL.B. degree in 1930 from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. After school, he worked as an attorney and became involved in housing construction. During World War II, he was responsible for building homes for defense workers in the eastern United States including the construction of the residential town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where parts of the atomic bomb were being developed in the Manhattan Project. After the war, he built suburban shopping malls in the Chicago area in partnership with the Chicago department store chain, Marshall Field & Company.