About Andy Stern

Andy Stern is a senior fellow at Columbia University's Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy. He was formerly president of the 2.2 million-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the union of hospital, health-care, nursing-home, food-service, home-care, janitorial, and public employees. SEIU played a major role in getting Barack Obama elected president of the United States in 2008, and it also is credited with being the driving force behind securing passage of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Stern was one of five presidential appointees to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Simpson-Bowles), where he authored a minority report on deficit reduction and promoting economic growth. He has served on numerous boards, including those of the Aspen Institute, Broad Foundation, Council on Competitiveness, Economic Policy Institute, Council on Foreign Relations Trade Task Force, Kaiser Coalition, Open Society Foundations, and Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Lee Kravitz is the author of the widely acclaimed memoirs Pilgrim: Risking the Life I Have to Find the Faith I Seek and Unfinished Business: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things and the former editor in chief of Parade magazine. Previously, he was the founding editor of React magazine and an editorial director of Scholastic Inc. He is a graduate of Yale University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.