Gala Awardee Biographies

Peter Lewis
 

Peter B. Lewis, born November 11, 1933 in Cleveland, Ohio, is the Chairman of Progressive Corporation, of which he acquired control in 1965 in an early leveraged buyout.  At that time, the small insurance company with $6 million in revenues specialized in insuring those drivers who had difficulty finding auto insurance.  For 42 years since, 35 as CEO, Lewis has overseen the transformation of the 100 employee company into a full-line auto insurer with 27,000 employees and annual sales of $14 billion. Today, Progressive is the nation’s third largest auto insurer.

Much of Progressive’s success derives from Lewis’ unique vision that the Mission of an auto insurer is to reduce the human trauma and economic costs of auto accidents in cost effective and profitable ways and his clarity about the Core Values governing his and Progressive’s behavior. Lewis demands and pays for excellent performance, and separates the people who don’t perform. Progressive revolutionized the staid auto insurance industry with 24-hour immediate response on claims and all service, mobile claim adjusters dispatched directly to accident scenes, offering consumers free comparative rates from other auto insurers via its highly acclaimed website, progressive.com and its 800 telephone number. Progressive is the only public company releasing complete monthly financial results.

Lewis, retired since 2000, invests through his philanthropy in people with purposes he shares and the management ability to achieve those purposes. He supports risk takers who break new ground and show results.   Lewis has challenged many of the nonprofit organizations he supports to improve their management and finances. In 2001, Lewis, who had contributed $36 million to construct a Frank Gehry designed building for Case Western Reserve University’s School of Management, began a boycott of all Cleveland charities, demanding replacement of the Trustees responsible for mismanaging the University. As Chairman of the Board of the Guggenheim Museum, Lewis demanded in 2002 that the institution cut its spending and operate on a sound financial basis. After ten years on the Guggenheim’s Board and contributing more than $77 million to the institution, he resigned from the Board because of differences over management quality and strategic direction. Lewis serves on the Board of Princeton University, his alma mater (Class of 1955), where he is its largest ever contributor (over $220 million)  including the largest gift in Princeton’s history ($101 million) to expand its programs in the creative and performing arts. Lewis’ other gifts to Princeton include $60 million for a Gehry designed science library and an endowment for the Lewis/Sigler Genomics Institute. His main challenge to Princeton is to improve on its already top-ranked excellence.

Lewis believes deeply in the value of individual freedom and tries to foster necessary governmental and social change. He supports the American Civil Liberties Union and helped finance the beginnings of the Democracy Alliance, Media Matters, the Center for American Progress, as well as other progressive efforts.

Lewis is an avid lover of sports, as both participant and fan. He is amicably divorced from Toby Devan Lewis, is the father of three and grandfather of four.
 

Congresswoman Donna F. Edwards
 

Congresswoman Donna F. Edwards of Fort Washington represents Maryland’s 4th Congressional District comprising portions of Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties.  She was sworn in as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 110th Congress in June 2008, and began her first full-term in the 111th Congress in 2009.

She serves on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee where she sits on:

    • Subcommittee on Highways and Transit
    • Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment where she is the Vice Chair
    • Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management

She serves on the Science and Technology Committee where she sits on:

    • The Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation
    • The Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics where she is the Vice Chair

She also serves as a member of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.

Rep. Edwards has enjoyed a diverse career as a nonprofit public interest and in the private sector on NASA’s Spacelab project.  Just prior to serving in Congress, she was the executive director of the Arca Foundation in Washington, DC. During her time at Arca, she gained national prominence in her efforts to:

    • Secure a "living wage" for working people.
    • Ensure the independence of the federal judiciary.
    • End capital punishment.
    • Protect Social Security, and
    • Promote labor and human rights both nationally and internationally.

Rep. Edwards was the co-founder and executive director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence where she led the effort to pass The Violence Against Women Act of 1994 that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Rep. Edwards completed undergraduate studies at Wake Forest University and received her Juris Doctor from Franklin Pierce Law Center. She is the proud mother of her son who is currently attending college. 

James Rucker
 

James Rucker is the executive director of ColorOfChange.org, an online citizens' lobby of over 600,000 people dedicated to amplifying the political voice of Black America and forcing politicians to be more responsive to its needs.  ColorOfChange.org was created in the aftermath of the failed governmental response to Hurricane Katrina and has expanded to lead a broad range of advocacy and electoral campaigns.  James recently co-founded the Citizen Engagement Laboratory, an incubator for new online organizing efforts using the model of ColorOfChange, largely focused on empowering currently underserved identity and issue based communities. 



Prior to founding ColorOfChange.org, James served as Director of Grassroots Mobilization for MoveOn.org Political Action and MoveOn.org Civic Action, pioneering new technology in the field of online organizing while driving numerous fundraising, technology, and political campaigns.  Prior to joining MoveOn, James worked in various roles in the software industry in Silicon Valley, co-founding and leading Imana, Inc., an enterprise software company in San Francisco, as well as providing management coaching and technology consulting for other start-up ventures.



James is also co-founder of Secretary of State Project (www.secstateproject.org), an effort to elect progressive Secretaries of State at the state level as a strategy to ensure both access to the ballot and that all votes are counted.  In 2006, the project raised over $500,000 for five candidates in swing states.  James is also co-founder of Video the Vote (videothevote.org), a citizen-journalism project that enables everyday people with home video cameras to serve as the eyes and ears for the public on Election Day.  In 2008, more than 3,000 volunteers participated in the program, submitting more than 1,000 videos, which were viewed more than 1 million times.



James grew up in Seaside, California and has a BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University.  He lives with his family in San Francisco.

Our Presenters

Anthony Romero

America’s Future Lifetime Achievement Award
Honoree: Peter B. Lewis, Chairman of the Board, Progressive Insurance

Anthony D. Romero is the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, the nation's premier defender of liberty and individual freedom. He took the helm of the organization just four days before the September 11, 2001 attacks. Shortly afterward, the ACLU launched its national Safe and Free campaign to protect basic freedoms during a time of crisis. Under Romero's leadership, the ACLU gained court victories on the Patriot Act, filed landmark litigation on the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, and filed the first successful legal challenge to the Bush administration's illegal NSA spying program.

Romero, an attorney with a history of public-interest activism, has presided over the most successful membership growth in the ACLU's history and more than doubled national staff and tripled the budget of the organization since he began his tenure. This unprecedented growth has allowed the ACLU to expand its nationwide litigation, lobbying and public education efforts, including new initiatives focused on racial justice, religious freedom, privacy, reproductive freedom and LGBT rights.

Romero is the ACLU's sixth executive director, and the first Latino and openly gay man to serve in that capacity. In 2005, Romero was named one of Time Magazine's 25 Most Influential Hispanics in America, and has received dozens of public service awards and an honorary doctorate from the City University of New York School of Law.

Born in New York City to parents who hailed from Puerto Rico, Romero was the first in his family to graduate from high school. He is a graduate of Stanford University Law School and Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs. He is a member of the New York Bar Association and has sat on numerous nonprofit boards.

Van Jones

2010 Paul Wellstone Citizen Leadership Award
Honoree: James Rucker, ColorofChange.org

Our country is in the depths of an economic recession and ecological crisis. We need nine million new jobs in the United States. They must be jobs that can support families and jobs that do no harm to the environment. America needs her best minds generating smart and innovative ideas to create more jobs. Van Jones is one of those people.

Van Jones is a globally recognized, award-winning pioneer in human rights and the clean-energy economy. He is the best-selling author of the definitive book on green jobs: The Green-Collar Economy. He served as the green jobs advisor in the Obama White House in 2009.

Van is currently a senior fellow at the Center For American Progress. Additionally, he is a senior policy advisor at Green For All.

Van also holds a joint appointment at Princeton University, as a distinguished visiting fellow in both the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Congressman Xavier Becerra

2010 America's Future Progressive Champion Award
Honoree: Congresswoman Donna Edwards

 First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992, Representative Xavier Becerra serves as Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus and is a senior member of the powerful Committee on Ways and Means.

The first Latino to serve on the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Becerra has used his position to increase opportunities for working families, to improve the Social Security program for women and minorities, to combat poverty among the working poor, and to strengthen Medicare and ensure its long-term viability. Rep. Becerra currently serves on the Health, Oversight, and Social Security subcommittees. He is also a member of the House Committee on Budget, which oversees the federal budget process.

Rep. Becerra is a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) where he served as Chair during the 105th Congress (1997-98). The Congressman is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. At the international level, he serves as Vice Chair of the U.S.-Korea Interparliamentary Exchange, and is Co-Chair of the Congressional Friends of Spain Caucus.

Prior to his election to Congress, Rep. Becerra served one term in the California Legislature as the representative of the 59th Assembly District in Los Angeles County. He is a former Deputy Attorney General with the California Department of Justice. The congressman began his legal career in 1984 working in a legal services office representing the mentally ill.

Rep. Becerra is the son of working-class parents and was the first in his family to graduate from college. His mother was born in Jalisco, Mexico and immigrated to the United States after marrying his father. In 1980, Rep. Becerra earned his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Stanford University. He was awarded his Juris Doctorate from Stanford Law School in 1984.

Rep. Becerra is married to Dr. Carolina Reyes. They are the proud parents of three daughters: Clarisa, Olivia and Natalia.