Marty Nemko

Marty Nemko
Born	June 30, 1950 (1950-06-30) New York, NY
Residence	Oakland, CA, Napa, CA
Alma mater	M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley B.A., Queens College
Occupation	career coach, author, columnist, radio host
Spouse	Barbara Nemko
Children	Amy Zubrensky
Website
MartyNemko.com

Martin Nathan Nemko (born June 30, 1950) is an American career coach, author, columnist, and radio host specializing in career/workplace issues and higher education reform. Dr. Nemko writes The Big Idea column for WashingtonPost.com and the Working it Out column for TheAtlantic.com. For six years his column appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. As Contributing Editor at U.S. News, he created and directed its annual Best Careers rankings. He has written over 1,000 published articles and six books including in 2012, How to Do Life: What they didn't teach you in school. The San Francisco Bay Guardian named Nemko "The Bay Area's Best Career Coach." U.S. News described him as "job coach extraordinaire." In its summit on education, ABC-TV called him "The Ralph Nader of Education."

Personal life

Nemko with his dog, Einstein

Marty Nemko was born in the Bronx, NY on June 30, 1950. He is the son of Boris and Seva Nemko, Holocaust survivors. Boris was a factory worker in Harlem and then ran a 200 square-foot clothing store at 105 Moore St., Brooklyn, NY.

Despite his parents able to speak almost no English, Nemko was reading on the 12th grade level in the first grade. He attended New York City public schools K-12 but had little interest in academics. He played the first of many gigs as a professional pianist at age 12 at a Montauk Air Force Base, the second, at age 13, at a Bronx bar. Nemko's high school record was undistinguished, earning an 87 (B+) average but he was elected Class Musician.

He attended Queens College (NY), where he again did not distinguish himself (3.3 GPA, psychology major) but did play varsity baseball, wrote for the student newspaper, played piano gigs on weekends, and drove a New York City taxi on weeknights.

While driving the cab, he met Neal Miller, who hired him as a research assistant at the Rockefeller University on the first research to prove biofeedback worked. But just months later, moved by the civil rights movement, Nemko quit to become a drug counselor in I.S. 61 in Corona, Queens, where he met his wife, Barbara Nemko, a reading teacher there and now Napa County Superintendent of Schools and member of the California State Schools Superintendent's cabinet.

Nemko felt he failed to help his students, and in an attempt to improve his skills, quit and enrolled in an education Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1980, his dissertation nominated for Berkeley dissertation of the year, he completed his Ph.D., specializing in evaluation of innovation, under Michael Scriven.

Career

Nemko, hosting Work with Marty Nemko on KALW-FM (NPR-San Francisco)

As career/workplace expert

In 1986, Nemko began as a career counselor, trained in part by Richard Nelson Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute. Nemko has since worked with 3,900 clients and enjoys a 96% client-satisfaction rate. He is in his 26th year as the regular career and education expert on KGO (AM) radio's Ronn Owens Program, one of the most listened-to shows on the West Coast. He hosted his own show on KGO from 2009-2011. He is in his 23rd year as host of Work with Marty Nemko on KALW, a National Public Radio station in San Francisco. As a guest, he has appeared on ABC's 20-20, Oprah and Friends, and multiple times on The Today Show, The CBS Early Show, NPR's Talk of the Nation, CNN, etc. He was the one-man in a one-man PBS Pledge Drive Special, Eight Keys to a Better Worklife. He has been the primary source for dozens of features in such publications as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Currently, he writes The Big Idea column for WashingtonPost.com and the Working it Out column for TheAtlantic.com.

His book, Cool Careers for Dummies (Wiley) published in three editions, was the #1-rated career guide in a Readers Choice poll and reached #2 on the Wall Street Journal national business bestseller list.

As education expert

While in graduate school, in 1977-78, Nemko was a school psychologist for the Tiburon/Belvedere, CA public schools. After completing his Ph.D. in 1980, he returned to inner-city teaching in Richmond, CA and held faculty (visiting lecturer) positions in the graduate schools of California State University, East Bay (1982-83), the University of California, Davis (1984-85), and the University of California, Berkeley (1986).

In 1986, his first book, How to Get Your Child a Private School Education in a Public School was published by Ten Speed Press, now a Random House imprint. A revised edition was published in 1989. The American School Board Association named it one of the year's Ten Must Books. An excerpt was the cover story of the back-to-school issue of Family Circle.

Nemko's next book, How to Get an Ivy League Education at a State University containing comprehensive profiles of 150 public institutions, was published by Avon in 1988. In a comparison with eight other subjective college guides in Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, Nemko's was the only one to receive an A rating. His book, The All-in-One College Guide: How to choose, get into, find the money for, and make the most of college was published by Barron's in 2004.

He was the senior author of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges procedures for accreditation and program review. He has been a consultant to 15 college presidents and given three invited addresses such as "America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education" at the Commonwealth Club, a nationally prominent public affairs forum.

His article, Higher Education: America's Most Overrated Product, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, was among the earliest in the recent spate of articles and books calling for higher education reform. After its publication, The Chronicle of Higher Education hired Nemko as Guest Blogger. In 2011 and 2012, Nemko has written features for WashingtonPost.com and TheAtlantic.com calling for government to require colleges to prominently post consumer information in what he calls The College Report Card. Nemko currently serves on the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Task Force on Improving Higher Education Accountability and Transparency.

As men's issues expert

Nemko is the co-president, with Warren Farrell, of the National Organization for Men, which attempts to educate the media to help ensure fair reporting on men's issues related to education, employment, divorce, and health care. He is on the Commission to Create a White House Council on Men and Boys. Nemko's writings on men's issues appear in MenSight magazine, Mensa Bulletin, jewishworldreview.com, and martynemko.blogspot.com.

Avocation

Nemko won awards as Best Director, Best Production, and the Roar of the Crowd award (Bay Area audience favorite) for his 2007 Bay Area Chanticleers Theatre production of Same Time, Next Year and Best Director and Best Production for Broadway Bound in 2010. In 2011, he co-wrote, directed, and was piano accompanist in a one-act one-woman show: Big, Black, and Shy starring Jeffrie Givens. The full two-act version debuts February 26, 2012.