Jack Miller

Jack Miller is founder and chairman emeritus of the Jack Miller Center.

Jack’s life and leadership are the driving force for the Jack Miller Center’s nationwide efforts to bring the American story of freedom back to American education.

Jack Miller is a prominent Chicago area entrepreneur and philanthropist.

A few years after college, Jack started a business called Quill from the back room of his dad’s poultry shop. His brothers later joined him and they grew the Quill Corporation into the nation’s largest independent direct marketer of office products, employing over 1,300 people by the time they sold it in 1998. Jack then joined his wife Goldie in running their family real estate businesses, and he became deeply involved in philanthropic work.

Jack credits his success to this country and the freedom it gives each of us to achieve our dreams. He realized that preserving the American dream is only possible if citizens understand what our country is about. Channeling the same entrepreneurial spirit, Jack founded the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History in 2004, and he has dedicated countless hours to help it grow.

I started the Center because I wanted to make sure the American Dream, which I have lived and benefit greatly from, would be available to future generations.”

Jack Miller

Thanks to Jack’s extraordinary vision, for nearly 20 years, the Jack Miller Center has been advancing America’s founding principles and history on college campuses and in K-12 classrooms across the country.

Jack was inducted into Philanthropy World Magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2012, he received the Joseph H. Kanter Citizen of the Year Award at the annual meeting of the National Conference on Citizenship. He has been honored with the Spirit of Life Award for the Office Products Council of the City of Hope, the Torch of Liberty award from the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith, and the Industrialist of the Year Award from the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce. He was elected a Fellow of the Illinois Business Hall of Fame and inducted into the Chicago Business Hall of Fame. In 1998, Jack received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

A 1950 graduate of the University of Illinois with a degree in Journalism, Jack is the author of three books. He calls his first book, Simply Success: How to Start, Build and Grow a Multimillion-Dollar Business the Old-Fashioned Way (2008), “a non-Harvard MBA in entrepreneurship.” His second book, Born to be Free (2018), is a layman’s interpretation of our founding principles and a description of the role the Jack Miller Center plays in teaching them. His most recent book, The Vision, a children’s book collaboration with his grandson, Arkie Ring, is targeted for a younger audience to explain the meaning of the words in the Declaration of Independence.

He is an active philanthropist who serves as Chairman Emeritus of the Jack Miller Center, President of the Jack Miller Family Foundation, and a partner at the Benida Group.