Morris Pearl

Morris Pearl currently serves as Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of 200 high-net-worth Americans who are committed to building a more prosperous, stable, and inclusive nation. The group focuses on promoting public policy solutions that encourage political equality; guarantee a sustaining wage for working Americans; and ensure that millionaires, billionaires, and corporations pay their fair share of taxes.  

Previously, Pearl was a managing director at BlackRock, one of the largest investment firms in the world. His work included the Maiden Lane transactions and assessing the government’s potential losses from bank bailouts in the United States and in Europe. Prior to BlackRock, Pearl had a long tenure on Wall Street where he invented some of the securitization technology connecting America’s capital markets to consumers in need of credit. He is a CFA Charter Holder, a member of the CFA Institute, the New York Society of Securities Analysts, and on the board of Verified Voting and The Center for Political Accountability. Pearl lives in New York City with his wife Barbara where he enjoys spending time with his two adult sons and riding his bicycle around the city.

Stephen Prince

Stephen Prince is the Vice-Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a businessman who founded National Business Products, now known as Card Marketing Services, in 1993. Prince focused the company’s attention on finding innovative print solutions for the credit, debit and prepaid card industry. As the gift card phenomenon began to evolve in the late ‘90’s, he switched the company focus from one that provided heavy paper print offerings to one whose primary product line was plastic cards and support materials for them. Today, as gift and loyalty card programs have proliferated and grown, Stephen is invited to deliver his “gift card gospel” to sales staffs, merchant clients as well as potential platform partners all over the U.S.

Naomi Aberly

Naomi Aberly is a political activist and civic volunteer who focuses her efforts on women’s health. Aberly serves on the boards of both the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF). She is a member of the Planned Parenthood Leadership Council, the Women Donors Network, and the EMILY’s List Majority Council. She is also an active supporter of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the Center for American Progress and the Texas Organizing Project.

Lawrence B. Benenson

Lawrence B. Benenson is a Principal of the Benenson Capital Company and a member of the company’s Investment Committee, involved in developing and implementing the company's investment strategies and internal operations as well as guiding the company's short and long-term planning. He guides the Company's near-term and long-range planning and has helped Benenson Capital Partners grow to become one of the nation's premier owners of net-leased properties. He has been involved with the Benenson family business since 1990. Benenson is the Chairman of the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy and Head Co-Chairman of the Lincoln Center Real Estate and Construction Council. He serves on the Boards of the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center in the Bronx, the Museum for African Art, the Center for Arts in Education, American Folk Art Museum, the ART/OMI International Arts Center, the New York Junior Tennis League, Al Hirschfeld Foundation and the Ad Reinhardt Foundation. He also serves on the Boards of the Inner-City Scholarship Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Previously, Benenson worked for Rose Associates, a real estate investment and development company specializing in Manhattan properties. Benenson holds a BA from Duke University. He is a member of the Real Estate Board of New York, Vice President of the Realty Foundation of New York, and a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Dan Berger

Dan Berger is a Philadelphia lawyer specializing in complex litigation from the plaintiff’s perspective including antitrust, securities, consumer protection, employment, environmental and civil and human rights. Mr. Berger’s firm has been a pioneer in the field of class action litigation and was one of two firms who filed the original class actions starting in the 1960s. For his long career in the law, Mr. Berger was recently named as a “Titan” in the field of complex litigation by the publication, Law 360. Mr. Berger is also very politically active and is the largest supporter of progressive political causes and groups in the Philadelphia area. He is currently a sponsor of the Progress Project which is being co-sponsored with the Brookings Institute and which is investigating the nature of social, economic and political progress in the historical sense and how to re-start and enhance historical progress.

Chuck Collins

Chuck Collins is an author and senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good. Heir to the Oscar Mayer fortune, he donated most of his inheritance at a young age. Collins is an expert on U.S. economic inequality and has pioneered efforts to bring together investors and business leaders to speak out publicly against corporate practices and economic policies that increase economic inequality. He is co-author, with Bill Gates Sr., of Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes. Chuck is the co-founder of Wealth for Common Good.

Geoff Coventry

Geoff Coventry is a founding member, owner, and COO of Tradewind Energy, Inc. Together with his two business partners, Coventry has overseen the growth of Tradewind from a startup to one of the nation's largest independent developers of wind and solar energy projects. Prior to Tradewind, Mr. Coventry was a co-founder and vice president of NetSales, Inc., one of the first companies to provide outsources electronic commerce services to businesses. The core business was sold to Digital River, Inc. in 2001. As a proponent of sustainable prosperity, an advocate for a national Job Guarantee, and a serious student of modern money theory (MMT), Geoff enjoys writing about how nations should use their currency-issuing power to address major social, economic, and ecological challenges. Mr. Coventry holds a degree in business administration from Baker University in Kansas and is a native of New Zealand.

Alan S. Davis

Alan S. Davis is president of The Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund, a private family foundation. Alan is the Director of the WhyNot Initiative, the foundation’s program to support social change efforts that have the potential to significantly address problems with the democratic process, income and wealth distribution, universal healthcare and tolerance. He was founder and CEO of Conservatree Paper Company, the leading distributor of recycled paper, and founder and CEO of ASDavis Media Group, a publisher of more than 40 travel guidebooks. He and his wife, Mary Lou Dauray, live in San Francisco and have six children and 8 grandchildren. Alan has a B.S. in business from USC and a J.D. from NYU Law School.

David desJardins

David desJardins was employee number 20 at Google, where he worked as a software engineer from 1999 to 2005. He is an active angel investor and philanthropist, a member of the board of the Tigerlabs technology incubator, a member of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a trustee of the University of California at Berkeley Foundation, a consultant at the Center for Communications Research at Princeton, a member of the steering committee of the Scholars Strategy Network, and a member of the board of the Democracy Alliance.

Philip Edmundson

Mr. Edmundson co-founded WGA in 1983. He became CEO in 1997 and has since grown the firm to be one of the largest independent brokerages in the country.

Mr. Edmundson is a Director of the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers (CIAB), in Washington, D.C.  He is Chair of The Alliance for Business Leadership (formerly the Progressive Business Leaders Network).  He is a past President of the Insurance Library Association of Boston. Mr. Edmundson served as the Chairman of Affordable Care Today, a coalition of business, consumer, provider, and labor organizations that led the campaign for Massachusetts Healthcare Reform in 2006.  He serves on the Board of Overseers of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He is a Trustee of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.  Mr. Edmundson is a Trustee of the Trustees of Reservations, a conservation organization.

He is an honors graduate of Amherst College, with a B.S. in Psychology/Neuroscience, where he was elected to Sigma Xi, the national scientific honor society.  Mr. Edmundson received his Masters of Business Administration degree with honors from Babson College.  He also received a Masters of Public Policy degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard University.

Jerry Fiddler

Jerry Fiddler is the principal/CEO of Zygote Ventures. He has helped create and grow a number of companies, as CEO, director, chairman, investor and advisor. 

Mr. Fiddler is the founder of Wind River, which became a leading provider of device software worldwide, and was for 23 years its CEO and Chairman. He is currently the Chairman of Solazyme, a biotech company using algae to make oil for food, energy, industrial, and health applications. Mr. Fiddler also sits on several other corporate boards, including Bolt Threads, Nanomix, and NexSteppe. 

Jerry Fiddler serves on the UC President’s advisory board on science and innovation. He is a member of the foundation board of Chabot Space & Science Center, and a trustee of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and the California Jazz Conservatory. He has been Foundation Capital executive-in-residence, and adjunct professor at UC Berkeley, teaching entrepreneurship and organizational behavior. He has worked actively both with students and in an advisory capacity at a number of universities, including University of California/Berkeley, Stanford, Wharton, and University of Illinois. 

Dr. Gail Furman

Dr. Gail Furman is a leading child and adolescent psychologist in Manhattan. She has been in private practice treating children, adolescents and their families for over 45 years and was the psychologist at both the Fieldston School and the Dalton School from 1973-1990. Furman serves on the executive boards of Human Rights First, Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America (LEDA), The Brennan Center for Social Justice at NYU Law School, and Auburn Seminary. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is an assistant clinical professor at New York University, where she is a consultant to the Child Study Center. Furman is also one of the founders of the Family Academy, a model experimental school in Harlem providing academic, social and mental health services for students and their families. She has been instrumental in developing collaborations and innovative partnerships to provide more competent, comprehensive service to inner-city children and families.

Jeffrey Gural

Jeffrey Gural is Chairman of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, an international commercial real estate firm covering 320 offices worldwide. Prior to joining Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, Gural was a member of the staff of Morse-Diesel Construction Co. Gural is recognized as an invaluable member of the Greater New York community, and serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Real Estate Board of New York, member of the Board of USO, member of the Board of Directors of the UJA-Federation, and many more.

Leo Hindery, Jr.

Leo Hindery, Jr. is Co-chair of the Task Force on Jobs Creation, founder of Jobs First 2012, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. An investor in media companies, he is the former CEO of AT&T Broadband and its predecesors, Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) and Liberty Media.

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court. Lessig serves on the Board of the AXA Research Fund, and on the advisory boards of Creative Commons and the Sunlight Foundation. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Association, and has received numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation’s Freedom Award, Fastcase 50 Award and being named one of Scientific American’s Top 50 Visionaries. Lessig holds a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.

Keith Mestrich

Keith Mestrich is the President and CEO of Amalgamated Bank. He joined the bank in 2012 after serving four years as the CFO of SEIU. A 25 -year veteran of the labor movement with Workers United, UNITE HERE, UNITE and the AFL-CIO, he started at Amalgamated as Director of the bank’s Washington D.C. office. In addition to working at the bank, Keith serves on the Board of Directors of the Democracy Alliance, the Roosevelt Institute, the D.C. Employment Justice Center, the Union Health Center, Hot Bread Kitchen and the labor incubator known as The Workers Lab. He is also an Advisory Board member of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition.

Scott Nash

Scott Nash is the founder of MOM's Organic Market, an organic grocery that promotes environmental justice. Started in 1987 out of his mom's garage, with an initial investment of $100, MOM’s has grown to become one of the nation's premiere chains of family owned and operated organic grocery stores. With approximately 800 employees and $130 million in annual revenue, MOM’s operates 12 stores in the Washington/Baltimore/Philadelphia region and plans to expand into the NorthEast corridor over the next several years with revenues anticipated to grow to $250 million.

Great Neck Richman

James S. “Great Neck” Richman is President and CEO of Richloom Fabrics Group, a textile convertor, designer, and distributor of home furnishing fabrics located in New York, with subsidiaries offices in Shanghai and Gurgaon. Richman runs the Richloom Family Foundation, which has set up the Endowed Scholarship at George Washington University and Case Western Reserve University, the Richman Visiting Professorship at Brandeis University, and given major donations to Jewish Philanthropic America and other organizations. Richman serves on the Board of Overseers at the New York University Stern School for Business, the Advisory Committee at Case Western Reserve University, and the Board of Trustees of the Atlanta High Museum of Art. He is also associated with several New York City Local Charities, such as the Association to Benefit Children and Publicolor.

Eric Schoenberg

Eric Schoenberg is Chairman of CampusWorks, Inc., a provider of technology leadership services to universities and colleges. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches a class on Family Wealth.  Dr. Schoenberg also conducts research on the psychology of money and asset market bubbles and has taught behavioral economics, decision making, and leadership at Columbia Business School, NYU’s Stern School of Business, and the Haas Business School of the University of California at Berkeley. Previously, he was Managing Director and Chief Knowledge Officer of Broadview International, a boutique investment bank offering merger and acquisition advisory services to Information Technology companies. Before that, he served as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Department of State. He is a Trustee of the Rubin Museum of Art; an Overseer of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology; and Chairman of the Investment Committee of Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern and Central New Jersey.

Ryan Smith

Ryan Smith lives and works in Salt Lake City, Utah. Ryan has worked in the Venture Capital/Angel Investing space for the past 15 years.  Ryan is the founder of Variance Ventures and a partner in startup incubator Boomstartup and mainly invests in the software/hardware space and in health diagnostics. Ryan became involved in progressive political issues via the Obama campaign and has continues to work with groups such as Democracy For America, Organizing For Action and Mew Media Ventures to name a few. Ryan is proud to support the Patriotic Millionaires movement as he sees most issues through the economic lens.

Joe Zimlich

Joseph C. Zimlich is the Chief Executive Officer of Bohemian Companies. Bohemian Companies, a private family financial office, includes the Bohemian Foundation, a family foundation; and Bohemian Asset Management, an investment management company with public equity, fixed income securities and private equity holdings.

Joe has held board of director level positions in the following industries: technology, semi-conductors, water filtration, trust, private & commercial banking, food service, and venture-capital funds. Joe served previously as a manager in mergers and acquisitions and as a specialist in the not-for-profit and banking industries, both at an international accounting firm. He currently serves as a Board member for Bohemian Foundation, First Western Trust Bank, Third Way, Committee On States Executive Committee, America Votes Executive Committee, Colorado Democracy Alliance Executive Committee, Colorado Donor Alliance and the Colorado State University System Board of Governors Executive Committee (where he previously served as Board Chair).

Joe graduated from the University of Iowa with a BBA in Accounting. He is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a Professional in Human Resources (PHR). He has been active in his community of Fort Collins, Colorado, notably with Colorado State University’s Global Leadership Council, EnviroFit International, the Economic Opportunities Advising Committee, Community Development Block Grant Committee, Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, Human Resources Ordinance Task Force, and Leadership Fort Collins.

George Zimmer

George Zimmer is the Founder and former CEO and Chairman of The Men's Wearhouse. Founded in 1973, he led the Company as Chief Executive Officer through 2011, at which time he named a successor. Mr. Zimmer is an active Advisory Board member with the Oakland Zoo and the Boys and Girls Club of Oakland and has served on numerous other boards, both for profit and non-profit, throughout his career. George is widely recognized in his community for his philanthropic efforts, which include Institute of Noetic Sciences, Chabot Space & Science Center, and Northern Lights School, all in the Bay Area. He received Honorary Doctorates from Holy Names University and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and the University of Redlands. Mr. Zimmer earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Washington University in 1970.