This content is from: Corner Office
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


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.
![]() 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 |