Jacob J. Lew was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 27, 2013, to serve as the 76th Secretary of the Treasury. Secretary Lew previously served as White House Chief of Staff. Prior to that role, Lew was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a position he also held in President Clinton’s Cabinet from 1998 to 2001. Before returning to OMB in 2010, Lew first joined the Obama Administration as Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources. Earlier, Lew served as OMB’s Deputy Director and was a member of the negotiating team that reached a bipartisan agreement to balance the budget during the Clinton Administration. In 1983, Lew was House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill’s liaison to the Greenspan Commission, which negotiated a bipartisan solution to extend the solvency of Social Security, and he was responsible for domestic and economic issues, including Medicare, budget, tax, trade, appropriations, and energy issues. Before joining the Obama Administration, Lew co-chaired the Advisory Board for City Year New York and was on the boards of the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Brookings Institution Hamilton Project, and the Tobin Project. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and of the bar in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
Tom Daschle is a Senior Policy Advisor at DLA Piper and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader. Daschle represented South Dakota in the Senate from 1987-2005. He served as both Senate Majority Leader and Minority Leader. After his tenure in the Senate, Daschle served as a special public policy advisor at Alston & Bird from 2005-2009, during which time he also co-founded the Bipartisan Policy Center with Bob Dole, Howard Baker, and George Mitchell (2007). Daschle is a board member of the Center for American Progress and of the National Democratic Institute. He has authored publications on the health care crisis and is considered a leading expert on health and renewable energy policy.
Anthony Williams is a former mayor of Washington DC, serving two terms from 1999 to 2007. Williams served as Chief Financial Officer of DC from 1995-1998, during which he played a large role in the District’s economic recovery. He is the William H. Bloomberg Lecturer in Public Management at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Williams has served as Executive Director of the Government Practice at The Corporate Executive Board Company since 2010. Prior to his current roles, he served in a variety of local, state and national government positions, including the Executive Director of the Community Development Agency in St. Louis, Missouri (1989-1991), the Deputy State Comptroller of Connecticut (1991-1993), and CFO of the U.S. Department of Agriculture under Bill Clinton (1993-1995).
Alan Blinder is the Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He served on President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors and later as Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve (1994-1996). Blinder played a significant role in the American Economic Association as Vice President and was named a Distinguished Fellow of the association in 2011. Blinder is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Philosophical Society. He has authored several books on economics and is a regular columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
Robert D. Reischauer (2013 Ball Award Event Committee Co-Chair) is President Emeritus of The Urban Institute and Distinguished Institute Fellow. Reischauer served on MedPAC for 9 years, and he is currently one of the two public trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds. He has also been a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. From March 1989 until March 1995, he was Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In 1975, he helped Alice Rivlin establish CBO and served as Assistant Director for Human Resources and Community Development and then as the Deputy Director. Reischauer has written extensively on federal budget policy, Congress, social welfare issues, education, and state and local fiscal problems. He is the recipient of the 2012 Robert M. Ball Award for Outstanding Achievements in Social Insurance.
Donna E. Shalala (2013 Ball Award Event Committee Co-Chair) is President of the University of Miami. From 1993-2001, Shalala served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, appointed by President Clinton. She has also served as Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1987 to 1993 and President of Hunter College of the City University of New York from 1980 to 1987. Shalala served in the Carter Administration as Assistant Secretary for policy development and research, Department of Housing and Urban Development. She is a past chair of the Board of the Children’s Defense Fund, and has written and lectured extensively on issues of education, urban, fiscal, political, tax, social science, and government financing.
Many thanks to the top sponsors of the 2013 Ball Award event:
Policy Innovators
The Honorable Eugene A. Ludwig and Dr. Carol Ludwig and Promontory Financial Group, LLC
Policy Leaders
Peter G. Peterson Foundation
WellPoint, Inc. / Amerigroup
Policy Implementers
Brookings Institution
Patricia M. Cloherty
Policy Formulators
Abt Associates
Avalere Health
Bloomberg
Campaign to Fix the Debt
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The Honorable Donna E. Shalala
Research Patrons
Comeback America Initiative
Federation of American Hospitals
G. William and Rosalind Hoagland
Robert and Charlotte Reischauer
RTI International
*List as of June 7, 2013. To become a sponsor, learn more here.