Chris Keyser
Former President and Co-Chair, Writers Guild of America Negotiating Committee
Christopher Keyser is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He began his career as a political speechwriter. He was the chief speechwriter for Governor Bruce Babbitt’s presidential campaign in 1988. Subsequently, he served as partner and co-founder of the political media company, First Tuesday Media, which made political ads and content for Democrats and progressive causes and which garnered numerous Pollie Awards (the political advertising equivalent of the television Emmys) for their efforts.
For more than twenty-five years, Mr. Keyser has been the creator, showrunner, and executive producer of numerous television series. He began, in 1994, by creating (along with his partner, Amy Lippman), the show Party of Five, which ran for six years on Fox and won, among other honors, the Golden Globe for Best Television Series Drama and the Humanitas Prize. Since then, he has shepherded (alone or with partners) the television series Significant Others, Time of Your Life and Lone Star (for Fox), Tyrant (for FX), The Last Tycoon (for Amazon), the remake of Party of Five (for ABC/Freeform), The Society (for Netflix), and Julia (for Max), for which he was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Best Writing in a Comedy. He is currently producing Take Me Out for Peacock. In film, Mr. Keyser has written Benefit of the Doubt, for Miramax and the independent film, Highland Park.
From 2011-2015, Mr. Keyser served as President of the Writers Guild of America, West. He also served as the co-chair of the 2023 Negotiating Committee, as well as the co-chair of the Agency Campaign Negotiating Committee. He currently serves as board member or trustee of Hollywood, Health and Society, The Humanitas Prize, The I Have a Dream Foundation, Los Angeles, and The Entertainment Community Fund.
