Undisclosed Income

Gladwell is ranked as one of the highest-paid speakers in America today, who pulls in up to $80,000 per speaking gig—or about $1 million a year, according to Fast Company. For comparison: Mitt Romney only made $500,000 in speaking fees in 2010.

Gladwell has yet to disclose a list of his corporate clients and how much they pay him. Here is a partial list compiled from various publicly available sources:

Smoking Gun Quotes

"Have I given paid speeches to companies or industries mentioned or affected by that article? Yes I have. As I stated earlier, I have given my Tipping Point talk to groups of doctors, hospitals, insurers, as well as Pharmacy Benefit Managers and groups funded by the National Institutes of Health. More specifically, I have on several occasions over the past four years given paid speeches on the Tipping Point to pharmaceutical companies. So did that create a bias in favor of the pharmaceutical industry?"

—From a 2004 disclosure statement issued on Gladwell's personal website after his New Yorker article, which defended the high cost of prescription drug, caused a minor controversy and raised concerns about his financial conflicts of interests.

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"...[I]t is clear that an end to smoking will produce an enormous increase in the financial obligations of the federal government."

—From a 1990 Washington Post article titled “Anti-Smoking Efforts May Carry High Price, Studies Say” that promoted an old industry-funded study arguing that smoking bans would bankrupt Medicare and Social Security