The ESA: Past, Present and Future

Douglas Lowenstein became the first president of the Entertainment Software Association (formerly the Interactive Digital Software Association) in June, 1994.  Since then, he built the ESA into the most influential and important worldwide trade body representing the computer and video game software industry.  Under Lowenstein’s leadership, ESA created the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB),  owned and ran the Electronic Entertainment Exposition (E3), built a worldwide anti-piracy program, and developed an effective federal, state, and local public policy advocacy program. Lowenstein recently announced he would leave ESA to launch a new trade association serving the private equity industry.     

Prior to joining the ESA, Lowenstein was an executive vice president in the Washington and New York strategic communications firm Robinson Lake Sawyer Miller, Inc.  From 1986-1991, Lowenstein was a Principal in National Strategies, Inc., a Washington public policy consulting firm.  He worked for U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH), from 1982-86, spending the last two years as legislative director.

Lowenstein spent the first eight years of his career as a newspaper reporter, starting with the Buffalo Courier Express, followed by two years at the Capitol Hill News Service and from 1976-82, in the Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau.  

Lowenstein received a B.A. degree in Political Science in 1973 from Washington University (MO).  He is the author of a book entitled Lowenstein: Acts of Courage and Belief, published in 1982 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in hardback and paperback editions.  The book chronicles the life of his late Uncle Allard K. Lowenstein, a Congressman and antiwar and civil and human rights activist killed in 1980.