C. Louis Kincannon

Who was C. Louis Kincannon?

Charles Louis Kincannon was an American statistician who served as the Director of the United States Census Bureau from 2002 to 2008. Kincannon had joined the Census Bureau in 1963. Kincannon took the Director's office on March 13, 2002 after being nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate. He served for six years until his retirement on January 3, 2008.

Kincannon was born in Waco, Texas, on December 12, 1940. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas in 1963.

He joined the United States Census Bureau in 1963 as a statistician. Kincannon worked at the Census Bureau for the majority of his federal career. His two exceptions were stints in the 1970s, when he joined the staff of the Office of Management and Budget, and a tenure as the chief statistician of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris during the 1990s.

Kincannon became the Director of the United States Census Bureau in 2002. He is credited with expanding the linguistic diversity of the Bureau's staff during his six year tenure. Kincannon purposely hired new census enumerators for the then-forthcoming 2010 U.S. census from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. He argued that employees who were familiar with different languages and ethnicities would produce a more accurate census count.