SPIELVOGEL, CARL

SPIELVOGEL, CARL (1928– ), U.S. businessman, diplomat. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Spielvogel graduated from the City College of New York and joined The New York Times as a copyboy while an undergraduate. He became a reporter for the business section in 1955, and three years later he was named the newspaper's first advertising columnist. He left the paper in 1960 to join the advertising firm McCann-Erickson, where he rose to executive vice president and general manager before joining McCann's parent, the Interpublic Group of Companies, in 1972. There he eventually became chairman of the executive committee. He left Interpublic in 1979 to form Backer & Spielvogel, one of the leading advertising agencies of the early 1980s. Mergers created Backer Spielvogel Bates Worldwide, where he was chairman until 1994. At his departure, Bates Worldwide was one of the world's leading marketing and advertising communications companies, with 185 offices in 65 countries. As an entrepreneur, Spielvogel was chairman and chief executive officer of United Auto Group, the nation's largest publicly owned automobile dealership group, from 1994 to 1997. In 1995 Spielvogel was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, which was responsible for the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other governmental broadcasting ventures. In 1997 he was named chairman of the international board of advisors of The Financial Times of London. In 2000, Clinton named him ambassador to the Slovak Republic, where he sought to promote trade. He served until 2001. Spielvogel was on the board of a number of cultural organizations in New York City, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the Asia Society. He served for more than 20 years as a trustee of Mount Sinai Medical Center and aided Eureka Communities, which works to rebuild inner cities. His wife, Barbara Diamonstein-Spielvogel, is the author of 18 books on art, architecture, and public policy. (Stewart Kampel (2nd ed.)