Dean Dinwoodey

Who was Dean Dinwoodey?

Dean Dinwoodey was the first president and chairman of BNA and a noted intellectual property law scholar. The Dean Dinwoodey Center for Intellectual Property Studies at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., bears his name.

Dinwoodey was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho and received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah. He went to Washington to attend The George Washington University School of Law, and during that period took a job at the fledgling BNA. BNA was conceived and established by noted newsman David Lawrence, founder of U.S. News & World Report, to report on the inner workings of Washington.

Dinwoodey was a Latter-day Saint. He served a three-year mission in Germany for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In 1946, when Lawrence wanted to devote his energies to the magazine, he sold BNA to his five top editors. Dean Dinwoodey, together with John D. Stewart, Ed Donnell, Adolph Magidson, and John Taylor opened up ownership in BNA to the other 279 full-time and 49 part-time employees, founding one of the nation’s first wholly employee-owned corporations.