Morris Pearl

Morris Pearl currently serves as Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of hundreds of high-net-worth Americans who are committed to making all Americans, including themselves, better off by 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, Mr. 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 governments’ potential losses from bank bailouts in the United States and in Europe.  Prior to BlackRock, Mr. 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.  Mr. 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.  In the early years of his company, Mr. Prince focused attention on finding innovative print solutions for the credit, debit, and prepaid segment of the payments 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 printed plastic cards and support materials for that market segment.  Today, as gift and loyalty card programs have proliferated and grown, Mr. Prince is invited to deliver his “gift card gospel” to sales staffs, merchant clients as well as potential platform partners all over the U.S. Of late, he has become more and more involved in startups, primarily in the payments industry, where and when his technology experience enhances an opportunity.  Mentoring young entrepreneurs is something he not only enjoys but is something he feels is his responsibility.

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Naomi Aberly

Naomi Aberly is a political activist and civic volunteer who focuses her efforts on women’s health.  Ms. Aberly is currently the Chair of the Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a Vice Chair of the DNC’s National Finance Committee, an Advisory Board Co-Chair of Organizing for Action, on the board of SiX- the State Innovation Exchange, and has served as a Co-Chair of Wendy Davis’ campaign for Governor of Texas.  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 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.  Mr. 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, the 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, Mr. Benenson worked for Rose Associates, a real estate investment and development company specializing in Manhattan properties.  Mr. 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.

Daniel Berger

Daniel 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 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 and Open Society projects which are being co-sponsored with the Brookings Institute and which are investigating the nature of social, economic, and political progress in the historical sense along with how to re-start and enhance historical progress.

Chuck Collins

Chuck Collins is an author and senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good and co-edits Inequality.org.  He is the great-grandson of meatpacker Oscar Mayer and gave away his inheritance at a young age.  Mr. 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.  His most recent book is Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good.  Mr. Collins is the co-founder of Wealth for Common Good, which merged into the Patriotic Millionaires in 2015.

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), Mr. Coventry 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.

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Alan S. Davis

Alan Davis is president of The Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund, a private family foundation.  Mr. Davis 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.

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David desJardins

David desJardins was employee number 20 at Google, where he worked as a software engineer from 1999 to 2005. He is 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

Philip Edmundson co-founded WGA, an insurance brokerage specializing in technology companies, in 1983.  He sold the business in 2015 to Arthur J. Gallagher and Co.  

Mr. Edmundson is a Trustee of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Trustees of Reservations (a conservation organization), the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and a Director of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center.  He is the former Chair of the Board of the Alliance for Business Leadership, a progressive business organization in Massachusetts.  He served as Chair of the Affordable Care Today coalition when it brought together labor, consumer, business, and provider organizations to pass Massachusetts Healthcare Reform legislation in 2006, a precursor to the Affordable Care Act nationally.  

Mr. Edmundson 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 founder, CEO and Chairman of Wind River Systems, a software design and consultancy firm with a market cap of over $1 billion.  Mr. Fiddler founded Wind River out of a rented garage and by 2009, the company was the leading provider of embedded software worldwide; its operating systems could be found in millions of devices and was used in historic projects including the NASA Clementine moon probe and all of the Mars rovers and landers. Mr. Fiddler is currently the Chairman of Solazyme, a biotech company doing groundbreaking work in renewable energy, and the Principal of Zygote Ventures, a privately held venture capital fund.  Mr. Fiddler serves on the UC President’s Advisory Board on Science and Innovation, the foundation board of Chabot Space & Science Center, and is a trustee of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and The California Jazz Conservatory.

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.  Dr. 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.  Dr. 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.

Ellyn Gelson

Ellyn Gelson is a California-based philanthropist who has long supported organizations focused on arts and culture, education, medical research, and charities that provide assistance to the disabled and disenfranchised. Ms. Gelson learned the lessons of philanthropy from her late husband Bernard, the founder of Gelson’s Markets, an upscale supermarket chain in Southern California.  Together, the two were committed to a living wage, to lending a helping hand to those who need it, and to providing a quality education—be it at a trade school or a university—so that everyone can enjoy the dignity that comes from contributing to society. Ms. Gelson continues to champion those values today.

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Monica Graham

Monica Graham was founder and General Partner of Graham Partners, a technology focused hedge fund based in New York, from 1996-2010. From 2010-present she acts in an advisory role to the organization.  Ms. Graham began her career at Oppenheimer & Co. before working at Drexel Burnham Lambert.  She then worked as an analyst at Sloate, Weisman, Murray, & Company.  After her time at Sloate, Ms. Graham founded her own consulting firm, Graham Investment Advisors, which advised hedge funds, before founding Graham Partners.  After leaving Graham Partners as General Partner, Ms. Graham has since founded and presently runs the Graham Family Foundation. Currently, Ms. Graham serves as Chair of the Board of Integrity First for America, an organization founded to protect democracy through litigation and public awareness.

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, Mr. Gural was a member of the staff of Morse-Diesel Construction Co.  Mr. 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, a member of the Board of Directors of the UJA-Federation, Chairman of the “I Have a Dream Foundation – NY,” and Co-Sponsor of the Chelsea-Elliot “I Have a Dream” Project,” Chair of the Board of Governors for Eugene Lang College- The New School for Liberal Arts, 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 predecessors, Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) and Liberty Media.

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Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Mr. 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. Mr. 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. Mr. 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 Chief Executive Officer of Amalgamated Bank and brings with him 25 years of experience working with the bank’s core constituencies in the labor movement and non-profit organizations.  Mr. Mestrich is a leader in the movement for labor unions and nonprofit organizations to build wealth for a purpose, not just a profit.  Previously, he advocated for the rights of working people as the CFO and Deputy Chief of Staff for SEIU and as an organizer for the AFL-CIO and UNITE.  Mr. Mestrich is a Fellow of the inaugural class of the Finance Leaders Fellowship Program and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.  He currently serves on the Board of Directors of The Roosevelt Institute, Democracy Alliance, Progressive Congress, Sidney Hillman Foundation, Capital and Main, The Workers Lab, Working America Education Fund, The Public Utility Law Project, Hot Bread Kitchen, and the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. He serves on the Advisory Boards of Girls Who Invest, is a Trustee on the Consolidated Retirement Fund, and a member of the Habitat for Humanity NYC Leadership Council.  Mr. Mestrich was recently named one of Washington Life Magazine’s “Power 100” top influencers and appeared on City & State’s “25 Most Influential Leaders in Manhattan” list.

Scott Nash

Scott Nash is the founder of MOM’s Organic Market, an organic grocery chain 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 1000 employees and $200 million in annual revenue, MOM’s operates 17 stores in the Washington/Baltimore/Philadelphia region, with plans to expand into the Northeast corridor over the next several years.

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James S. “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.  Mr. 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.  Mr. 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.  Dr. Schoenberg also conducts research on the psychology of money and asset market bubbles, and has taught classes in behavioral economics, decision making, family wealth and leadership at Wharton, 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.  

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.  Mr. Smith 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.  Mr. Smith 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.  Mr. Smith is proud to support the Patriotic Millionaires movement as he sees most issues through the economic lens.

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Joe Zimlich

Joe Zimlich is the Chief Executive Officer of Bohemian Companies.  Bohemian Companies is a private investment office committed to innovative and sustainable investment opportunities that often target social impact as well as financial returns.  Mr. Zimlich also serves on the board of Bohemian Foundation, a family foundation.

Mr. Zimlich has held board or 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, Ampt, LLC, Democracy Alliance, Third Way, Committee On States Executive Committee, America Votes Executive Committee, Colorado Democracy Alliance Executive Committee, and Colorado Donor Alliance.

Mr. Zimlich 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 the Colorado State University System Board of Governors (where he previously served as Board Chair), Colorado State University’s College of Business 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.  Mr. Zimmer is widely recognized in his community for his philanthropic efforts, which include the 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, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and the University of Redlands.  Mr. Zimmer earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Washington University in 1970.