Quick links: Barbara B. Kennelly, Acting Chair, Dana K. Bilyeu, Jagadeesh Gokhale, Dorcas R. Hardy, Marsha Rose Katz, Mark J. Warshawsky, Former Board Members
Barbara B. Kennelly, Acting Chair
Barbara B. Kennelly became President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare in April 2002 after a distinguished 23-year career in elected public office. Mrs. Kennelly served 17 years in the United States House of Representatives representing the First District of Connecticut. During her Congressional career, Mrs. Kennelly was the first woman elected to serve as the Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus. Mrs. Kennelly was also the first woman to serve on the House Committee on Intelligence and to chair one of its subcommittees. She was the first woman to serve as Chief Majority Whip, and the third woman in history to serve on the 200-year-old Ways and Means Committee. During the 105th Congress, she was the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Social Security. Prior to her election to Congress, Mrs. Kennelly was Secretary of State of Connecticut. After serving in Congress, Mrs. Kennelly was appointed to the position of Counselor to the Commissioner at the Social Security Administration (SSA). As Counselor, Mrs. Kennelly worked closely with the Commissioner of Social Security Kenneth S. Apfel, and members of Congress to inform and educate the American people on the choices they face to ensure the future solvency of Social Security. She served on the Policy Committee for the 2005 White House Conference on Aging. Mrs. Kennelly received a B.A. in Economics from Trinity College, Washington, D.C. She earned a certificate from the Harvard Business School on completion of the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration and a Master's Degree in Government from Trinity College, Hartford. Term of office: January 2006 to September 2011.
Dana K. Bilyeu
Dana K. Bilyeu is the Executive Officer of the Public Employees' Retirement System of Nevada. As the Executive Officer of the $21 billion pension trust she is responsible for all aspects of fund management including analysis of plan funding, investment oversight, operational and strategic planning, and fiduciary and governance issues. Mrs. Bilyeu is principally responsible for the relationship with the System's independent actuary and oversees the data reconciliation process for actuarial valuations of the System. In her capacity as the Executive Officer, Mrs. Bilyeu provides information and analysis to the Nevada Legislature in consideration of pension policy issues affecting state and local government. Prior to her appointment as the Executive Officer, Mrs. Bilyeu served for eight years as the System's Operations Officer, overseeing all aspects of benefit administration, including survivor, disability, and retirement benefit programs. Mrs. Bilyeu also was responsible for cost effectiveness measurement for all activities of the System. She was accountable for technology oversight as well as policy issues related to the public safety sector of public employment. Prior to her employment at the System, Mrs. Bilyeu was the System's legal counsel, representing the System in a variety of aspects from benefits litigation, contracts analysis, to Board governance. Mrs. Bilyeu is a member of the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, the National Council on Teacher Retirement, the National Conference of Public Employee Retirement Systems, and the National Association of Public Pension Attorneys. She also serves on the Public Employee Advisory Board for the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. She received her juris doctor from California Western School of Law and her B.A. from the University of Arizona. Term of office: December 2006 to September 2010.
Jagadeesh Gokhale
Jagadeesh Gokhale is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He earlier worked at the American Enterprise Institute as a visiting scholar (2003), the U.S. Treasury Department as a consultant (2002), and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland as a senior economic advisor (1990-2003). An economist by training, his main research fields are macro and public economics with a special focus on the effects of fiscal policy on future generations. During 2008, he served as a member of the Task Force on Sustainability Issues for the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board.
Dr. Gokhale has written extensively on policy issues including Social Security and Medicare reform, national saving, private insurance, financial planning, wealth inequality, generational accounting, and public intergenerational transfers and he has testified several times before Congress on these topics. He has published several papers in such top-tier journals as the American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics; in publications of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Cleveland Federal Reserve; in the US Budget report's Analytical Perspectives; and in popular newspapers and online media such as the Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, American Spectator, and Forbes.
Dr. Gokhale is a co-author of Fiscal and Generational Imbalances that revealed the US fiscal imbalance to be in the tens of trillions of dollars. Another book by him entitled Social Security: A Fresh Look at Policy Alternatives is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in 2010. Term of Office: November 2009 - September 2015.
Dorcas R. Hardy
Dorcas R. Hardy is President of DRHardy & Associates, a government relations and public policy firm serving a diverse portfolio of clients. After her appointment by President Ronald Reagan as Assistant Secretary of Human Development Services, Ms. Hardy was appointed Commissioner of Social Security (1986 to 1989) and was appointed by President George W. Bush to chair the Policy Committee for the 2005 White House Conference on Aging. Ms. Hardy has launched and hosted her own primetime, weekly television program, "Financing Your Future," on Financial News Network and UPI Broadcasting, and "The Senior American," an NET political program for older Americans. She speaks and writes widely about domestic and international retirement financing issues and entitlement program reforms and is the co-author of Social Insecurity: The Crisis in America's Social Security System and How to Plan Now for Your Own Financial Survival, Random House, 1992. A former CEO of a rehabilitation technology firm, Ms. Hardy promotes redesign and modernization of the Social Security, Medicare, and disability insurance systems. Additionally, she has chaired a Task Force to rebuild vocational rehabilitation services for disabled veterans for the Department of Veterans Affairs. She received her B.A. from Connecticut College, her M.B.A. from Pepperdine University, and completed the Executive Program in Health Policy and Financial Management at Harvard University. Ms. Hardy is a Certified Senior Advisor and serves on the Board of Directors of Wright Investors Service Managed Funds, and First Coast Service Options of Florida. First term of office: April 2002 to September 2004. Current term of office: October 2004 to September 2010.
Marsha Rose Katz
Marsha Rose Katz is a Project Director at the University of Montana Rural Institute in Missoula, where her work has concentrated on assisting persons with disabilities to utilize Social Security work incentives to start their own businesses or engage in wage employment. Since coming to the Rural Institute in 1999, Ms. Katz has focused on providing training and technical assistance on both employment and SSI/SSDI to rural, frontier and tribal communities across the country. Previously, she worked for nearly 20 years in a disability rights community based organization, the Association for Community Advocacy (ACA), a local Arc in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She served as both Vice President of ACA, and Director of its Family Resource Center. It was at ACA that Ms. Katz began her nearly 30 years of individual and systems advocacy regarding programs administered by SSA, especially the SSI and SSDI programs. Ms. Katz has written numerous articles and created many widely distributed user-friendly general handouts on SSI and SSDI, the majority of which focus on the impact of work on benefits, and utilizing work incentives. She is the author of Don't Look for Logic; An Advocate's Manual for Negotiating the SSI and SSDI Programs, published by the Rural Institute. Her Bachelor's and Master's Degrees are from the University of Michigan. Ms. Katz's many years of experience as a trainer, technical advisor, and advocate have been guided and informed by her partnership with people with disabilities, from her husband, Bob Liston, to the people she assisted in her work with ACA and the Arc Michigan, her current work at the Rural Institute, and her longstanding participation in ADAPT, the nation's largest cross-disability, grassroots disability rights organization. Term of office: November 2006 to September 2012.
Mark J. Warshawsky
Mark J. Warshawsky is Director of Retirement Research at Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a global human capital consulting firm. He conducts and oversees research on employer-sponsored retirement programs and policies.
A frequent speaker to business and professional groups, Dr. Warshawsky is a recognized thought leader on pensions, social security, insurance and health care financing. He has written numerous articles published in leading professional journals, books and working papers, and has testified before Congress on pensions, annuities and other economic issues. A member of the Social Security Advisory Board for a term through 2012, he is also on the Advisory Board of the Pension Research Council of the Wharton School.
From 2004 to 2006, Dr. Warshawsky served as assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Treasury Department. During his tenure, he played a key role in the development of the Administration's pension reform proposals, particularly pertaining to single-employer defined benefit plans, which were ultimately included in the Pension Protection Act ("PPA") of 2006. He was also involved extensively in the formulation of Social Security reform proposals, and oversaw the Department's comprehensive 2005 study of the terror risk insurance program. In addition, Dr. Warshawsky led the efforts to update and enhance substantially the measures and disclosures in the Social Security and Medicare Trustees' Reports, as well as the setting of the macroeconomic forecasts which underlie the administration's budget submissions to Congress.
Dr. Warshawsky's research has been influential in the 2001-2002 regulatory reform of minimum distribution requirements for qualified retirement plans, the increasing realization of the importance of financial protection against outliving one's financial resources in retirement, and a product innovation to integrate the immediate life annuity and long-term care insurance. For the latter research, he won a prize from the British Institute of Actuaries in 2001 for a professional article he co-authored. Favorable tax treatment for this integrated product was also included in PPA due to Dr. Warshawsky's advocacy.
Dr. Warshawsky has also held senior-level economic research positions at the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. and TIAA-CREF, where he established the Paul A. Samuelson Prize and organized several research conferences. A native of Chicago, he received a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and a B.A. with Highest Distinction from Northwestern University. Term of office: December 2006 to September 2012.
Former Board Members
Jo Anne Barnhart
October 1998 to November 2001
Bradley D. Belt
November 2003 to April 2004
William C. Brooks
January 1996 to September 1996
Jeffrey R. Brown
October 2006 to September 2008
Hal Daub, Chair
January 2002 to September 2006
Lori Hansen
October 1994 to September 2000
Martha Keys
November 1994 to September 2005
Harlan Mathews, Chair
January 1996 to September 1997
David Podoff
October 2000 to September 2006
Stanford G. Ross, Chair
October 1997 to September 2002
Sylvester J. Schieber
January 1998 – September 2009
October 2006 – September 2009, Chair
Gerald M. Shea
October 2000 to September 2004
Arthur "Pete" Singleton
November 1994 to October 1996
Carolyn L. Weaver
October 1994 to September 1997
Mark A. Weinberger
October 2000 to May 2001