< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On
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Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman
Founder and Director; Policy Director
Pension Rights Center
PNR
They’re known in pension circles as Team Karen. For a combined 70 years, Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman have been working to protect and promote the retirement security of U.S. workers and retirees. Ferguson launched the Washington-based Pension Rights Center in February 1976 in response to the 1974 passage of ERISA. Her mandate has three prongs: to educate congressional members and the public on pension law, to ensure government agencies implement the law consistent with its intentions and to provide legal advice and training to help consumers resolve pension benefit problems. Ferguson, a Harvard Law School graduate who hired Friedman as policy director in 1980, proposed and lobbied for policies that became part of pension law, including the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 and the Retirement Equity Act of 1984. A major focus now is “to work for a better private retirement system that is secure, adequate and covers all Americans,” says Ferguson, whose new pension design, Retirement Security Funds, introduced at the center’s 2013 “Re-Imagining Pensions” conference, influenced recently retired Senator Tom Harkin’s USA Retirement Funds proposal. The PRC was the first to sound the alarm on the dangers of pension de-risking, publishing fact sheets about lump-sum buyouts, annuity transfers and pension freezes. Friedman, a Georgetown University graduate who testifies before congressional committees, led the recent challenge to Internal Revenue Service rulings conferring ERISA-exempt “church plan” status on pension plans run by religiously affiliated organizations that are not churches.
The 2014 Pension 40
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| 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 |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans | Damon Silvers AFL-CIO | Laurence Fink BlackRock | Chris Christie New Jersey | Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 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 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Orrin Hatch Utah | Abigail Johnson Fidelity Investments | Ted Wheeler Oregon | Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley | James Hoffa International Brotherhood of Teamsters |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 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 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| 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 |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| 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 |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| 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 |
