Jim Towey - Career

Career

Prior to his 2002 - 2006 White House service, Towey was employed for 12 years as a U.S. legal counsel to Mother Teresa of Calcutta. As her attorney, he helped to ensure people were not using Mother Teresa's name to raise money without her permission, assisted in establishing AIDS clinics and homeless shelters, and coordinated immigration matters for her nuns. In the 1980s Towey lived as a full-time volunteer in Mother Teresa's home for people with AIDS in Washington, D.C.

Towey has said that the experience of working with Mother Teresa motivated him to establish the non-profit organization Aging with Dignity in 1996. The Five Wishes booklet and additional resources on CD help people express how they want to be treated if they are seriously ill and unable to speak for themselves. Over 12 million copies of the group's Five Wishes document, called "the living will with a heart and soul", have been distributed worldwide by more than 15,000 organizations.

During his 2002 - 2006 service as Faith Czar, (the informal name for Towey's White House position of Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives), Towey decried "militant secularism"; the view that religious considerations should be excluded from government affairs and public education.

Towey also served as senior adviser to U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Oregon) for ten years, and as director of Florida's health and human services agency under Gov. Lawton Chiles (D).