This content is from: Corner Office
The 2015 Pension 40: Ted Wheeler
No. 20 Ted Wheeler, Treasurer / Oregon


Nearly five years of work paid off in June for Ted Wheeler, 53, when Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a bill allowing for the creation of a private sector retirement savings plan for workers who can’t get one through their employers. Wheeler, Oregon’s state treasurer since 2010, was named chairman of the Oregon Retirement Savings Task Force in 2011, whose goal was to recommend a plan to the legislature for private sector workers. “There were people who thought it was the greatest thing ever and people who thought it was the beginning of the end for civilization,” says Wheeler, who has an undergraduate degree in economics from Stanford University, an MBA from Columbia University and a master’s in public policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Many questioned whether the initiative was necessary considering the private retirement products available, but Wheeler contends that if employees don’t have access to auto-enrollment at work, all those options don’t help. “If we simply continue with the status quo, with about half of Americans not saving adequately for retirement, the cost to taxpayers will be staggering as more and more people rely upon costly government safety-net programs,” he says. Oregon’s $87.9 billion state retirement system was recently listed in a Wall Street Journal analysis as the fifth healthiest in the country, with 95.9 percent of future obligations funded. Wheeler, who is running for mayor of his hometown of Portland, attributes the system’s health to strong earnings, which he hopes will continue to improve with the impending adoption of BlackRock’s Aladdin portfolio management system.
![]() 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation ![]() 3. Chris Christie New Jersey ![]() 4. Randi Weingarten AmericanFederation of Teachers ![]() 5. Phyllis Borzi U.S. Department of Labor |
![]() 6. Kevin de León California ![]() 7. Alejandro García Padilla Commonwealth ofPuerto Rico ![]() 8. Laurence Fink BlackRock ![]() 9. Rahm Emanuel Chicago ![]() 10. Sean McGarvey North AmericanBuilding Trades Unions |
![]() 11. John Kline Minnesota ![]() 12. J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department ![]() 13. Damon Silvers AFL-CIO ![]() 14. Jeffrey Immelt General Electric Co. ![]() 15. Joshua Gotbaum Brookings Institution |
![]() 16. Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. ![]() 17. Mark Mullet Washington ![]() 18. Terry O'Sullivan Laborers' International Union of North America ![]() 19. Raymond Dalio Bridgewater Associates ![]() 20. Ted Wheeler Oregon |
![]() 21. Thomas Nyhan Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund ![]() 22. Karen Ferguson & Karen Friedman Pensions Rights Center ![]() 23. Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee forMultiemployer Plans ![]() 24. Robert O'Keef Motorola Solutions ![]() 25. Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley |
![]() 26. Kenneth Feinberg The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg ![]() 27. Orrin Hatch Utah ![]() 28. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University ![]() 29. Ian Lanoff Groom Law Group ![]() 30. Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business |
![]() 31. Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees' Retirement System ![]() 32. Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services ![]() 33. Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research ![]() 34. Denise Nappier Connecticut ![]() 35. W. Thomas Reeder Jr. Pension BenefitGuaranty Corp. |
![]() 36. Hank Kim National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems ![]() 37. Paul Singer Elliott Management Corp. ![]() 38. Bailey Childers National PublicPension Coalition ![]() 39. Amy Kessler Prudential Financial ![]() 40. Judy Mares U.S. Labor Department |