Christopher Edley, John Podesta Join Century Foundation Board

12/3/2002

From: Christy Hicks of the Century Foundation, 212-452-7723; email: hicks@tcf.org

NEW YORK, Dec. 3 -- The Board of Trustees of The Century Foundation has elected Christopher Edley Jr. and John Podesta as its newest members.

Edley and Podesta bring to the board a wealth of scholarly expertise and real world experience in politics and governance.

The Century Foundation, formerly the Twentieth Century Fund, is a policy research foundation that undertakes timely and critical analyses of major economic, political, and social institutions and issues. Nonprofit and nonpartisan, it was founded in 1919 and endowed by Edward A. Filene. For more than eight decades, it has provided information and insight for the nation's important public policy debates.

The board is chaired by Alan Brinkley, one of the nation's preeminent scholars in the field of twentieth century American history and the Allan Nevins Professor of History at Columbia University. Board members include distinguished individuals in the fields of academia, law, business, the nonprofit sector, and government service, including officials and advisers in the Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton administrations. (Complete list of trustees is attached.)

Edley and Podesta join the board at a crucial juncture for the Foundation, as it attempts to provide leadership in defining a new progressive policy agenda in a time of shrinking federal and state resources, public skepticism about government, and concern about terrorism and a possible war with Iraq. To that end, the Foundation has devoted significant time and resources over the past year to its Homeland Security Project, on which both Edley and Podesta have served in leadership roles. Other issues on the Foundation's agenda include Social Security, health care, education reform, tax policy, and election reform.

"We are delighted to welcome Chris Edley and John Podesta to the Board," said Brinkley. "I know the Foundation will benefit greatly from their leadership and counsel as we attempt to contribute to the current national debates, which are likely to shape our nation's economic and social policy for years to come."

Christopher Edley has been a professor at Harvard University Law School since 1981. He has served in a wide range of public service positions, including assistant director of White House Domestic Policy Staff (Carter administration), national issues director (Dukakis presidential campaign), and senior adviser on economic policy (Clinton-Gore Presidential Transition Team). He served in the Clinton administration as associate director for economics and government in the Office of Management and Budget, and as special counsel to President Clinton. He is the author of Not All Black and White: Affirmative Action, Race and American Values and currently serves as codirector of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard.

John Podesta, the former chief of staff to President Clinton, is currently a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. He served in the first Clinton administration as an assistant to the president and staff secretary at the White House. He also served as a senior policy advisor to the president. Before joining the Clinton administration, Podesta was president and general counsel of Podesta Associates Inc., a government relations and public affairs firm based in Washington, D.C. He has had extensive Capitol Hill experience, serving as chief counsel for the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, and as chief minority counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittees on Security and Terrorism; on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks; and on Regulatory Reform.

------ The Century Foundation Trustees and Officers --

TRUSTEES -- H. Brandt Ayers, chairman, Consolidated Publishing Co.; publisher, The Anniston Star, Anniston, Alabama;

-- Peter A. A. Berle, lawyer; broadcaster on Public Radio; former president, National Audubon Society; former New York State Commissioner of Environmental Conservation; former member of the New York State Legislature;

-- Alan Brinkley, professor, Department of History, Columbia University;

-- Joseph A. Califano Jr., chairman and president, The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University; former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare;

-- Alexander Morgan Capron, university professor of law and medicine, University of Southern California;

-- Hodding Carter III, president and CEO, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Miami, Florida;

-- Edward E. David Jr., president, EED Inc., Bedminster, New Jersey; principal, vice president, and treasurer, the Washington Advisory Group; former President, Exxon Research and Engineering Company; former Science Adviser to President Nixon; former executive director, Bell Telephone Labs;

-- Brewster C. Denny, professor and dean emeritus, Graduate School of Public Affairs, University of Washington; chairman, Twentieth Century Fund, 1986-94;

-- Christopher Edley Jr., professor, Harvard University Law School and co-director, of Harvard's Civil Rights Project; former associate director for economics and government, OMB, and special counsel to President Clinton;

-- Charles V. Hamilton, Wallace S. Sayre Professor Emeritus of Government, Department of Political Science, Columbia University;

-- Matina S. Horner, executive vice president, TIAA-CREF; president emerita, Radcliffe College;

-- Lewis B. Kaden Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell;

-- U.S. Rep. James A. Leach, First Congressional District, Iowa;

-- Richard C. Leone, president, The Century Foundation; former Chairman, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey;

-- Jessica Tuchman Mathews, president, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; former journalist, scientist, National Security Council staff;

-- Alicia H. Munnell, Peter F. Drucker chair in management sciences, Carroll School of Management, and director of the Center for Retirement Research, Boston College; former member, President's Council of Economic Advisers; former assistant secretary of the treasury for economic policy;

-- P. Michael Pitfield, senator, Ottawa-Vanier, Ontario, Canada; Vice Chairman, Power Corporation of Canada;

-- John Podesta, visiting professor, Georgetown University Law Center; former chief of staff and senior policy advisor to President Clinton;

-- Richard Ravitch, chairman, Aquarius Management Corporation; Ravitch, Rice & Company LLC; Chairman, AFL/CIO Housing Investment Trust and the Corporation for Supportive Housing;

-- Alan Sagner, principal, Alan Sagner Companies; director, 42nd Street Development Corporation; former chairman, Corporation for Public Broadcasting; former chairman, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey;

-- Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., historian; writer; Albert Schweitzer Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, City University of New York; former special assistant to President Kennedy;

-- Harvey I. Sloane, M.D., directs numerous domestic and international projects (Russia) for Project HOPE and Eurasian Medical Education Program; former county judge/executive, Jefferson County, Kentucky; former Commissioner of Public Health of the District of Columbia; former mayor, Louisville, Kentucky; former Director, Community Health Center, Louisville, Kentucky;

-- Theodore C. Sorensen, senior counsel, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; former special counsel to President Kennedy;

-- Kathleen M. Sullivan, dean and Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Stanley Morrison Professor of Law, Stanford University;

-- David B. Truman, former professor of government, vice president, and provost, Columbia University; former president, Mount Holyoke College; former president, Russell Sage Foundation;

-- Shirley Williams, public service professor emeritus of electoral politics, John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; deputy leader and spokesperson on foreign affairs for the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords (UK); cofounder and former president, Social Democratic Party (UK); former member of the British Cabinet;

-- William Julius Wilson, Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Harvard University; 1998 recipient of the National Medal of Science;

OFFICERS Chairman: Alan Brinkley Vice Chairman: James A. Leach Treasurer: Richard Ravitch Secretary: Peter A.A. Berle Clerk: Matina S. Horner President: Richard C. Leone

The Century Foundation is a research foundation that undertakes timely, critical, and analytical studies of major economic, political, and social institutions and issues. Nonprofit and nonpartisan, TCF was founded in 1919 and endowed by Edward A. Filene.