Research Coordinator, Producer, Writer

Contact: John.Clevenger@genesisquest.org

Dr. John Clevenger, GQ’s Manager, was born in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, the son of a U.S. Congressman. He received a doctorate in music theory from the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, a master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. As a doctoral student, he carried out extensive research in France and Italy, discovering three previously unknown compositions of Claude Debussy.

Known for his attentiveness to detail and his knack for finding things in unexpected places, he received three national awards as a graduate student, including the $100,000 National Graduate Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences from the U.S. Department of Education and two prizes for his research and writing from the American Musicological Society. His 1441-page dissertation entailed five summers of research in France and Italy, study of more than 350 encyclopedias, books, and articles in four languages (English, French, German, and Italian), and consideration of over 60 early compositions of Debussy, more than 20 of which were unpublished.

Following a three-year stint as music theory lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, John managed an instructional software start-up, learning important lessons about running a business and dealing with investors. He then worked for four years as a clinical data manager for a Santa Barbara medical device company, during which period he studied Lean Six Sigma business-process optimization through Villanova University, and read extensively about business administration, quality assurance and project management. He is attempting to apply wisdom gained from Henry Ford and W. Edwards Deming in his oversight of GQ’s audacious efforts.

In 2008 John turned to a career as a writer. He wrote his first film script, Queen of the Dolls, about a teenage heart transplant recipient he met on the Internet, whom he helped survive her arduous recovery partly by entertaining her Holocaust-era fantasies worthy of Edgar Allan Poe. His epic novel, The Flood, is a tale of the discovery of Atlantis and Lemuria and the separate cataclysms that destroyed them. He hopes to parlay this fact-based-fiction project into four blockbuster films. Even better, he now intends to live his own adventure and help uncover the truth about these legendary advanced ancient civilizations.