Andrew Young - Post-mayoral Career

Post-mayoral Career

Young ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Georgia in 1990, losing in the Democratic primary run-off to future Governor Zell Miller. However, while running for the Statehouse, he simultaneously was serving as a co-chairman of a committee which, at the time, was attempting to bring the 1996 Summer Olympics to Atlanta. Young played a significant role in the success of Atlanta's bid to host the Summer Games.

In October 1994, then-U.S. president Bill Clinton, along with then-president of South Africa Nelson Mandela, established the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund (SAEDF), and named Young as its Chairman. The fund was established to provide funding to help small- and medium-size indigenous businesses throughout southern Africa.

In 1996, Young wrote A Way Out of No Way: The Spiritual Memoirs of Andrew Young, published by Thomas Nelson.

In 1996, Young and Carlton Masters co-founded GoodWorks International, a consulting firm "offering international market access and political risk analysis in key emerging markets within Africa and the Caribbean." The company's Web site also notes that "GWI principals have backgrounds in human rights and public service. The concept of enhancing the greater good is intrinsic to our business endeavors." Nike is one of GoodWorks' most visible corporate clients. In the late 1990s, at the height of controversy over the company's labor practices, Young led a delegation to report on Nike operations in Vietnam. Anti-sweatshop activists derided the report as a whitewash and raised concerns that Nike was trading on Young's background as a civil-rights activist to improve Nike's corporate image.

Young also has been a director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, and also is the chairman of the board for the Global Initiative for the Advancement of Nutritional Therapy.

From 2000 to 2001, Young served as president of the National Council of Churches.

In 2003, Young founded the Andrew Young Foundation, an organization meant to support and promote education, health, leadership and human rights in the United States, Africa and the Caribbean.

In 2004 Young briefly considered running for U.S. Senate from Georgia after the incumbent, Zell Miller, announced his retirement, but decided not to re-enter public life.

In 2005, to honor the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Young, William Wachtel and Norman Ornstein founded Why Tuesday?, a nonpartisan group dedicated to increasing voter participation by moving the national voting day from Tuesday to the weekend.

From February to August 2006, Young served as the public spokesman for Working Families for Wal-Mart, an advocacy group for the retail chain Wal-Mart. Young resigned from the position soon after a controversial interview with the Los Angeles Sentinel, in which, when asked about Wal-Mart hurting independent businesses, he replied, "You see those are the people who have been overcharging us, and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs."

In 2007, the Andrew Young Foundation produced the documentary film Rwanda Rising, about Rwanda's progress since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Young also served as the film's narrator. Rwanda Rising premiered as the opening night selection at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2007.

An edited version of Rwanda Rising served as the pilot episode of Andrew Young Presents, a series of quarterly, hour long specials airing on nationally syndicated television.

On January 22, 2008, Young appeared as a guest on the television show The Colbert Report. Host Stephen Colbert invited Young to appear during the writer's strike, because, many years earlier, Young and Colbert's father had worked together, but on opposite sides, to mediate a Charleston, South Carolina, hospital workers' strike.

Young made another appearance on The Colbert Report on November 5, 2008, to talk about the election of Barack Obama to the presidency.

In February 2012 Young was appointed a Georgia Trustee.