After teasing you a bit last week about our 2026 Spring Symposium, “HOW WE WIN, Tax the Rich, and Save the World,” we’re thrilled to officially bring you into the fold and invite you to join us virtually for what we think will be one of the best events of the year. In just five days, you’ll be able to stream an event unlike any other. How do we know that? Because we’re having the conversations that need to be had, and bringing key players into the room.
And we want you there with us!
This coming Tuesday, April 14th, we will host donors, business leaders, strategists, policy experts, activists, candidates, and elected leaders in Washington, DC for a high-level discussion about the threat posed by extreme wealth concentration and what we can do to solve it. Moderated by Patriotic Millionaires’ President, Erica Payne, our panelists and speakers will explore how to leverage the potent, pivotal moment America finds itself in to return political power to the people, dismantle authoritarian forces, and put working people at the center of our politics. Together, they will unpack the ideas and tactics necessary to ensure durable prosperity, a resilient democracy, and the rich, stable, and free nation that the vast majority of Americans want.
Among other things, “HOW WE WIN” will highlight the bold, commonsense principles at the heart of Patriotic Millionaires’ legislative platform, The MONEY Agenda. We’ll specifically highlight the Equal Tax Act and Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act, which are two pieces of recently introduced legislation modeled after parts of our MONEY Agenda. And we spoke about it a few weeks ago, but we’ll address the criticism that the Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act has continued to receive in political and tax policy circles. Erica didn’t pull punches about it when she spoke recently to Axios: “Holy cow … did we set off a sh*tstorm.”
Other topics of discussion will include the growing influence of artificial intelligence and its impact on the affordability crisis; our Team MONEY project and the opportunity to engage rural “red” voters in the fight for economic justice; successful efforts to tax the rich we’re seeing in states; and the connection between the fight for democracy and the fight for tax justice.
Be sure to tune into the livestream of “HOW WE WIN” HERE next Tuesday, April 14th, from 9AM to 12PM ET. You can also watch the livestream on our website, Facebook page, and YouTube channel.
For this week’s Closer Look, we want to tell you about the incredible speakers lined up for our Symposium, some of whom are Patriotic Millionaires.
Abigail Disney
Abigail Disney is a philanthropist, social activist, Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, and member of Patriotic Millionaires. Her latest film, “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and is available on-demand.
Abigail has spoken on behalf of Patriotic Millionaires numerous times—whether it’s at the Vatican, or the World Bank, or even on a projection in South Africa during the G20. She also spoke at our 2025 Symposium, “How to Beat the Broligarchs.” You can watch a clip of her remarks here, beginning at the 2:47:33 mark.
John Driscoll
John Driscoll is a member of Patriotic Millionaires and the Chair of Magnit Global, an international staffing firm managing over 700,000 employees. He also chairs the boards of the Waystar Corporation and UConn Health. He is the former President and Executive Vice President of Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), overseeing Walgreens’ healthcare assets. John joined WBA in October 2022 when the company acquired CareCentrix, where he had served as Chief Executive Officer since 2013. He is also a Senior Advisor to the EQT Group and the co-author of Pay the People: Why Fair Pay is Good for Business and Great for America (2024).
You may also recognize John from our previous conferences. Like Abigail, he spoke at our 2025 Symposium; you can check out his remarks here beginning at the 29:17 mark. John also spoke at our November event, “MONEY. Message. Millionaires.”, about the business case for paying workers living wages.
Senator Noel Frame
State Senator Noel Frame has represented Washington’s 36th District since 2023 after serving the district as a state representative since 2016. An award-winning legislator, Senator Frame has been honored more than 15 times for her work on many issues, including fixing the state’s tax code. Most notably, Senator Frame was the lead sponsor of Washington’s Millionaires’ Tax, a bill signed into law in 2026 that creates an income tax of 9.9% on income over $1 million.
Jayati Ghosh
Jayati Ghosh is a Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has authored and edited 21 books and over 200 scholarly articles and is considered one of the leading thinkers when it comes to the global study of economic inequality.
Professor Ghosh spoke at our 2024 Symposium, “How to Fix Everything.” You can watch her speech here beginning at the 1:33:00 mark.
Dr. Kimberly Hardy
Dr. Kimberly Hardy is running to be the U.S. Representative for North Carolina’s 7th congressional district against Rep. David Rouser. The district includes Columbus County, which is where our first Team MONEY cohort is based. Dr. Hardy has a PhD in Social Work and is a professor at Fayetteville State University. She has deep ties to the local community and understands that her constituents need real solutions to address the cost of living crisis.
Troy Jackson
Troy Jackson is a Democratic candidate for Governor of Maine. He is a fifth-generation logger from Allagash, and spent years working 80-hour weeks in the woods before helping lead the 1998 border blockade that brought national attention to the exploitation of Maine loggers. A former State Senate President, Troy took on big pharma to lower prescription drug prices, stood up to corporate polluters, and delivered for working families—all while winning a deep-red district time and time again.
Brittany Newton
Brittany Newton is running for the North Carolina House of Representatives District 46 seat, currently occupied by House Majority Leader Brenden Jones. She’s a veteran of the US Army, a tax professional, caregiver, and single mom of two. You may remember Brittany from The Deciders, a documentary that spotlighted the journey of our first cohort of our Team MONEY project (formerly Great Economy Project) in Whiteville, North Carolina. The film particularly highlights Brittany and how she quickly became one of the standout leaders of the Whiteville cohort.
Samantha Oltman
Samantha Oltman is the AI & Work Editor at The Guardian and Co-founder of Good Luck Media, the first global journalism studio dedicated to focus on climate change storytelling. She has led award-winning teams at Vox, Recode, and BuzzFeed News. She was also an executive producer of Vox Media’s “Land of the Giants” narrative podcast and CNN’s “Titans of Tech” documentary series.
Erica Payne
It almost feels silly writing a bio for Erica because you’ve heard from her directly before on so many topics pertaining to our work. But, as the host and moderator of our Symposium, we feel she’s certainly earned her spot on this list!
Erica is the Founder and President of Patriotic Millionaires. Previously, she founded and ran The Agenda Project, a public policy advocacy organization, and the Tesseract Group, a marketing strategy firm specializing in public policy advocacy. She is the co-author with Morris Pearl of Tax the Rich: How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer (2021) and the author of The Practical Progressive: How to Build a 21st Century Political Movement (2008).
You can get a taste of Erica’s incredible MC skills by rewatching all of our previous Symposiums: 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2019.
Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez
The daughter of working-class Guatemalan immigrants, Representative Delia C. Ramirez represents IL’s 3rd Congressional District. The first Latina elected to Congress in Illinois and the entire Midwest, the Congresswoman currently serves on the Committee on Homeland Security and the Committee for Veterans Affairs, where she is the ranking Democratic member of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.
You may remember that Congresswoman Ramirez led the introduction of the Equal Tax Act, modeled after part of our MONEY Agenda, in the House in September. You can rewatch the press conference to announce the introduction of the bill, where Congresswoman Ramirez and many of our millionaire members spoke, here.
Dominic Rushe
Dominic Rushe is the Business Editor at The Guardian US. He and his team at The Guardian won the 2014 Pulitzer prize for public service journalism.
Senator Chris Van Hollen
Senator Chris Van Hollen, the senior Senator from Maryland, has held his office since 2016 after serving for 14 years in the House of Representatives. Senator Van Hollen is an award-winning legislator and a tireless champion for the people of Maryland across issues including education, veterans affairs, energy, the environment, health care, civil rights, economic inequality, and small businesses.
Last month, Senator Van Hollen led the introduction of the Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act. You can watch him; our chair, Morris Pearl; and other labor leaders speak at the press conference introducing the bill here.
Igor Volsky
Igor Volsky leads the Tax the Greedy Billionaires campaign and is the founder of Volsky Ventures. Previously, he served as the founding executive director of Guns Down America and has held leadership positions at Groundwork Action and the Center for American Progress.
Randi Weingarten
Randi Weingarten has served as President of the American Federation of Teachers union since 2008. Previously, she was president of the United Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2 and chaired New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee. Over the years, Weingarten has received many commendations; among others, she was included in Washingtonian’s 2021 “Washington’s Most Influential People” list, City & State New York’s 2021 “New York City Labor Power 100” list, and Washington Life’s 2018 Power 100 list of prominent leaders. She’s also the author of Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy, which exposes the long-planned strategy to undermine education.
You might recognize Randi from standing alongside our Chair, Morris Pearl, at last month’s press conference introducing the Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act, where she declared the legislation to be AFT’s “number one priority.”
Vanessa Williamson
Vanessa Williamson is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. She is also the author of Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes, and, with Harvard Professor Theda Skocpol, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.
Vanessa spoke eloquently about her latest book, The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History, at our “MONEY. Message. Millionaires.” event in November. She also collaborated with Patriotic Millionaires to create a video expanding on her explanation about the relationship between strong democracies and taxation.
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Join us for this no-holds-barred discussion about how to defeat the oligarchs and wrestle the dark forces of today’s politics back into the hidden recesses of the human mind where they belong. Tune into our livestream—which you can access HERE—on Tuesday, April 14th, at 9AM ET for this can’t-miss event, “HOW WE WIN, Tax the Rich, and Save the World.”