Billionaires, Secrets, Zegnas: Will Lewis’ Thirst for Power
Some are born into worlds where men wear $1,100 calfskin-and-suede Zegna sneakers. Others have to scrap, hustle and charm their way into them. There was nothing given about the ascent of Will Lewis—who wears his Zegnas in navy blue with the white leather strap—to the top of the Washington Post.
Lewis, 55, is not a product of the playing fields of Eton, or any of England’s grand institutions. He was sent to Whitefield, a post-war public school built on the site of a disused waterworks. It was next to a vast shopping mall and the pulsating ten-lane highway that cuts through London’s northern suburbs.
Other British men running American newsrooms—CNN’s Mark Thompson, Bloomberg’s John Micklethwait—were privately educated in august surroundings before going “up” to Oxford. Lewis’s parents could have sent him to a private school (his father ran a packaging business) but they were opposed to them, and Lewis’s much older brother had gone from Whitefield to Oxford. Lewis didn’t get in. He went to Bristol, a mid-tier university. No path was laid out for him. He had to find one.