Louis Tharp

After running Clay Marketing & Public Relations, a successful international public relations, advertising, and marketing company for nearly 20 years, and working for some of the largest international PR and marketing agencies specializing in maritime, technology, health and dot coms, Louis Tharp became a social entrepreneur in 1999. He co-founded and acted as venture capitalist for CreakyJoints, an international service organization and social media site for people with arthritis, RedPatch, an advocacy organization for people with psoriasis, and CreakyBones, a social networking site for people with osteoporosis which are now a part of the Global Healthy Living Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit patient advocacy an access to care organization. He is currently Executive Director. GHLF and Louis Tharp are also active in eliminating fail first practices within the healthcare industry where people are forced to fail on insurer-specified medications before they can take the prescription drugs their physicians prescribe. Previously, Louis Tharp was a contract writer for The New York Times and other daily newspapers. He published his first book, The Complete Manager's Guide to Promotional Merchandise (Dow-Jones Irwin) in 1989. As the swim coach for the U.S. Military Academy Triathlon Team (West Point, NY), he shared his training methods in his 2007 book, Overachiever's Diary: How the Army Triathlon Team Became World Contenders by Louis Tharp, published by Total Immersion. An elite swimmer himself, Louis Tharp won two gold and two silver medals at the 2006 Gay Games, and two silver and two bronze medals at the 2009 Outgames (www.Outgames.org) in Copenhagen. He served on the Board of Visitors for the College of Business Administration at Butler University, Indianapolis, where he graduated with both a B.S. and B.A. in Journalism in 1972. He and his partner were married in Connecticut and live in Upper Nyack, NY.