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The 2014 Pension 40: John and Laura Arnold

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John and Laura Arnold
Co-founders
Laura and John Arnold Foundation

Pension policy was not something John Arnold, 40, gave much thought to during his days as an energy trader at now-defunct Enron Corp. Nor were pensions on his mind during the years when he ran his own natural-gas-focused hedge fund. That changed after Arnold and his wife, Laura, a former corporate attorney, founded the Laura and John Arnold Foundation in 2008 in their hometown, Houston, and the next year signed the Giving Pledge, agreeing to donate half their fortune in their lifetimes. Pension reform quickly became a pillar of the foundation, with the Arnolds funding pro-reform candidates and ballot initiatives through their political contributions. “We as a foundation get drawn to issues where actors who are involved in shaping public policy have interests that differ from good long-term public policy,” says John Arnold, who majored in mathematics and economics at Vanderbilt University. Pension reform “is an issue that does not have a natural advocate because the cost is dispersed across society as a whole and the benefit goes to a concentrated few.” Arnold says he grew more passionate about the need for pension reform after reading Steven Greenhut’s 2009 book, Plunder: How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation. Over the past four years, as the foundation has played an active role in states like Illinois, Kentucky and Rhode Island, in some cases in partnership with the Pew Charitable Trusts, Arnold has come under criticism from labor, which sees a deep-pocketed billionaire taking away its entitlements. The Arnolds counter that they are trying to help workers by forging an equitable and sustainable retirement system for all.

The 2014 Pension 40

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Bruce Rauner
Illinois
John and
Laura Arnold

Laura and John
Arnold Foundation
Randi Weingarten
American Federation of Teachers
Rahm Emanuel
Chicago
David Boies
Boies, Schiller & Flexner
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Randy DeFrehn
National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans
Damon Silvers
AFL-CIO
Laurence Fink
BlackRock
Chris Christie
New Jersey
Robin Diamonte
United Technologies Corp.
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Ted Eliopoulos
California Public Employees’ Retirement System
John Kline
Minnesota
J. Mark Iwry
U.S. Treasury Department
Gina Raimondo
Rhode Island
Phyllis Borzi
U.S. Labor Department
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Orrin Hatch
Utah
Abigail Johnson
Fidelity Investments
Ted Wheeler
Oregon
Caitlin Long
Morgan Stanley
James Hoffa
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
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Amy Kessler
Prudential Financial
Alejandro
García Padilla

Puerto Rico
Christopher Klein
U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia
Steven Rhodes
Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
Kevin de León
California
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David Draine
Pew Charitable Trusts
Jordan Marks
National Public Pension Coalition
Sam Liccardo
California
Joshua Rauh
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman
Pension Rights Center
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Timothy Blake
Moody’s Investors Service
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University
Edward (Ted) Siedle
Benchmark Financial Services
Daniel Loeb
Third Point
Judy Mares
Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department
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Andrew Biggs
American Enterprise Institute
Andy Stern
Columbia University
Kenneth Mehlman
KKR & Co.
Teresa Ghilarducci
New School for Social Research
A. Melissa Moye
U.S. Treasury Department


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