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The 2015 Pension 40: J. Mark Iwry

No. 12 J. Mark Iwry, Senior Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary / U.S. Treasury Department

By Tyler Davies

December 22, 2015

< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb

J. Mark Iwry

Senior Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary / U.S. Treasury Department

Last year: 13

J. Mark Iwry, 65, has been working to enhance retirement income security for U.S. workers since he served in the Clinton administration. In February 2006, Iwry, then a fellow at the Brookings Institution, and David John, then at the Heritage Foundation (now working at the AARP and Brookings), unveiled the Automatic IRA program to ensure that all U.S. workers are enrolled in a savings program. A feature of every federal budget since 2009, when Iwry was appointed to his current job as senior adviser to the secretary and deputy assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, the AutoIRA has yet to pass Congress. When the program began to stall, the Harvard Law School and John F. Kennedy School of Government grad and former Georgetown University professor sought a simpler solution. In January, Treasury launched the My Retirement Account program (myRA) after beta testing; President Obama announced it in his 2015 State of the Union address. “We think it’s a really attractive option to help expand coverage to new savers: a no-cost, safe, principal-protected Roth IRA invested in a U.S. savings bond,” Iwry says. Meanwhile, states have begun to create their own retirement plans —some, like the Illinois Secure Choice Savings Program, modeled after the AutoIRA. Iwry hopes myRA will become part of the new state initiatives.

The 2015 Pension 40