Advisory Board

 Marilyn G. Fedak

Vice President Emeritus, Alliance Bernstein and Founder, Marilyn G. Fedak Capitalism Project

Marilyn Fedak is Vice Chair Emeritus of AllianceBernstein Global, Founder of the Marilyn G. Fedak Capitalism Project, and Co-Founder of the Adam Smith Society. She joined Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., Inc. (a predecessor company of AllianceBernstein) in 1984 as a senior portfolio manager. She was Chief Investment Officer for U.S. Large-Cap Value Equities from 1993 to 2009. In 2003, she also became the business head of Bernstein Global Value Equities. In 2009, she was named Vice Chair of investment services. Ms. Fedak also created and headed the firm’s talent development team and was President of the Sanford C. Bernstein Mutual Funds. She was a partner at AllianceBernstein and served on Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.’s board of directors.  She is also a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Reihan Salam

President, Manhattan Institute

Reihan Salam is Manhattan Institute’s fifth president. Previously, Salam served as the executive editor of National Review and a National Review Institute Policy Fellow; in 2017, he was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Salam is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, National Affairs, and National Review. Mr. Salam is the author of Melting Pot or Civil War? (Sentinel, 2018) and the co-author, with Ross Douthat, of Grand New Party (Doubleday, 2008).

Early in his career, Mr. Salam was an editorial researcher for David Brooks at The New York Times and a producer at NBC News, before becoming associate editor of The Atlantic. His writing has appeared in publications such as Slate, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, and The Spectator—and he has appeared as an analyst on a number of radio and television programs, including All Things Considered, Face the Nation, and This Week.

Vaness Mendoza

Executive Vice President, Manhattan Institute

Vanessa Mendoza is the executive vice president of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a domestic public-policy think tank. She joined the Institute in 2006 as a policy analyst for its legal policy division. She was named vice president for development in 2009, and in 2012 was named executive vice president of the Institute. As executive vice president, Vanessa works with MI’s president to develop and manage the Institute’s strategic focus and projects. Additionally, she focuses her time on the Institute’s next-generation leadership initiatives including the Institute’s Young Leaders program and Adam Smith Society. She has broad oversight of the Institute’s development team. Prior to joining the Manhattan Institute, she worked for the 2004 Republican National Convention, and for a private-practice attorney.

Vanessa earned her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and her B.A. from New York University with a concentration in the fields of political science, history, and election law. She serves on the board of Intelligence Squared U.S, an organization that seeks to restore critical thinking, facts, reason, and civility to American public discourse, on the advisory board of Open the Books, a nonprofit that works to make government spending transparent to all and the publications committee of the Manhattan Institute’s magazine City Journal. She is a former board member of Teneo, an organization of young professionals committed to advancing ideas that promote human freedom and flourishing. Vanessa lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. with her husband and two children.

Evan Baehr

Co-Founder, Able Lending, & Co-Author, Get Backed

Evan Baehr is Cofounder/President of Able, a financial technology company that fuels the Fortune 5,000,000 with the lowest interest loans anywhere on the internet. He's coauthor of Get Backed (Harvard Business Press), the #1 best-selling book for entrepreneurs starting companies. Mr. Baehr founded the first chapter of the Adam Smith Society at Harvard, and now serves on its board of advisors. Formerly he founded Outbox, the postal mail disruptor shut down by the federal government, worked for Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Paypal's Peter Thiel, ran the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton, Yale, and Harvard Business School. He lives with his wife, Kristina Scurry Baehr, and two children in Austin, TX.

Eugene B. Meyer

President, The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies

Eugene B. Meyer is the President of the Federalist Society, where he has served in leadership roles for more than 30 years.  He is responsible for growing the organization from a small group of law students to a community of 50,000 lawyers, law students, academics, judges, and others interested in the rule of law.  He earned his B.A. in history at Yale in 1975 and his M.A. in political science from the London School of Economics in 1976. Mr. Meyer currently serves on the boards of the U.S. Chess Center, the Holman Foundation, and the advisory board of the Adam Smith Society.  He holds the title of International Chess Master. Gene lives in McLean, Virginia, with his wife, Lori, and their son, Samuel.

Lawrence Mone

Lawrence J. Mone was president of the Manhattan Institute from 1995 until his retirement in 2019. He joined the Institute in 1982, serving as a public policy specialist, program director and vice president before being named the Institute's fourth president.

A Summa Cum Laude graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, Mr. Mone taught high school history in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for several years before earning a master's degree in public policy from the University of California at Berkeley in 1982.

Under his leadership the Manhattan Institute has sponsored and disseminated research on such topics as tax and economic policy, education, welfare reform and crime. The Institute has expanded its work with civic leaders in New York and across the country to promote free-market solutions to urban policy problems. And it has broadened its focus on the American justice system, examining issues like employment law and class action suits.

The Manhattan Institute publishes numerous reports and books on these and other topics. The Institute's quarterly magazine, City Journal, has become one of the nation's premier public policy magazines and played a pivotal role in reforming New York City leading Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to call it "a forum for some of our city's—and our nation's—most incisive thinkers, whose writings have enriched our public discourse and helped shape public policy."

James Piereson

President, The William E. Simon Foundation

James Piereson is a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and president and trustee of the William E. Simon Foundation. During 1985–2005, he was executive director and trustee of the John M. Olin Foundation. Previously, Dr. Piereson served on the political science faculties of Iowa State University, Indiana University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught government and political thought. He holds a B.A. and a Ph.D. in political science from Michigan State University. He is author, co-author, or editor of five books dealing contemporary American policy issues and American political thought and practice. His articles and reviews on higher education and political ideas have appeared in numerous journals, magazines, and newspapers.

In addition to service on the Adam Smith Society's Advisory Board, Dr. Piereson also serves on the boards of the Pinkerton Foundation, Thomas W. Smith Foundation, Center for Individual Rights, Philanthropy Roundtable (where he was chairman, 1995–99), Foundation for Cultural Review (as chairman), American Spectator Foundation, and DonorsTrust.