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EBSA News Release: [04/09/2003]
Contact Name: Sharon
Morrissey
Phone Number: (202) 693-8664
U.S. Labor Secretary Appoints New Members to ERISA
Advisory Council, Names Leadership
WASHINGTON—U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao today
announced the appointment of five persons to three-year terms on the Advisory
Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans. She also made two
one-year appointments to fill unexpired terms and announced the leadership for
the 2003 Council year.
The ERISA Advisory Council, as it is commonly known, consists of 15
members appointed by the Labor Secretary to three-year terms. Five of the terms
expire each November 14, the end of the Council year. The members represent
various stakeholders in the employee benefits world.
“These seven distinguished individuals bring a wealth of experience
and expertise in their respective fields,” Chao said. “I know that
they and the returning members of the Advisory Council will work hard to
analyze and make recommendations about issues important to the security of
workers' benefits, while also supporting employers' efforts to provide these
benefits in our voluntary system.”
Filling the five three-year terms in the respective fields will be Mary
B. Maguire of New York City, corporate trust; R. Todd Gardenhire of
Chattanooga, Tenn., investment management; Mark Bongard of Lexington, Ky.,
employer representative; Thomas Nyhan of Rosemont, Ill., employee
organizations, and Antoinette Pilzner of Detroit, Mich., general public.
Mary Maguire, now a consultant with Davis Consulting in New York City
and a former partner with EBUSINESSWARE, Inc, was previously the managing
director of Global Asset Management and Mutual Funds for J.P Morgan Chase and
Co. and managing director and division executive of the treasury department of
the Chase Manhattan Bank. At the latter, she was entrusted with the bank’s
investment portfolios in 18 countries, and, under her leadership, assets
increased from $2.5 billion to $8 billion. During her 25 years with Chase, she
also managed foreign fixed income securities and foreign corporate equity
trading, as well as municipal bond and corporate bond portfolios.
R. Todd Gardenhire served previously on the ERISA Advisory Council from
1985-1988. Since 1987, he has been senior vice president of investments at
Salomon Smith Barney, prior to which he was an assistant vice president at
Merrill Lynch for 10 years. He became a certified portfolio manager and
retirement plan consultant in 1988 and has been involved in money and account
management since 1976.
Mark Bongard is a senior benefits attorney for Ashland, Inc., a Kentucky
company with 22,000 employees that provides petroleum, chemical and highway
construction products and services. In 18 years of legal practice, Bongard has
worked primarily in the area of employee benefits representing small, medium
and large employers, and in qualified deferred compensation plans. A member and
past director of the Lexington Employee Benefits Council, he serves as a member
of the Retirement Security Committee of the ERISA Industry Committee
(ERIC).
Thomas C. Nyhan, general counsel of the Central States, Southeast and
Southwest and Welfare and Pension Funds, has testified before several
congressional committees regarding benefits legislation. A faculty member for
the American Bar Association’s National Institute for Continuing Legal
Employment Law, he has written numerous articles for legal publications on
employee benefits issues.
Antoinette Pilzner is a practicing employee benefits attorney with
Butzel Long, a Michigan law firm. As a member of the Society for Human Resource
Management’s National Compensation and Benefits Committee, she recently
represented SHRM before the ERISA Advisory Council Working Group on Fiduciary
Training and Education at a hearing to identify ways to promote better
education and training of employee benefit plan fiduciaries and to strengthen
the retirement security of working Americans and their families.
Two new members were appointed to fill one year remaining in unexpired
terms. They are Donald B. Trone of Pittsburgh, Pa., who will replace Dr. Shlomo
Benartzi as the investment counseling field representative, and John S.
“Rocky” Miller of Los Angeles as the employer organization (multi
employer plan) representative. Trone is president and founder of the non-profit
Foundation for Fiduciary Studies affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh.
He is a national expert on investment fiduciary responsibility. Miller will
complete the term of the late Thomas McMahon. As a practicing lawyer with 25
years of experience, Miller is a partner and head of the labor and
employees’ benefits practice at Cox, Castle and Nicholson, a California
law firm.
Named to the 2003 positions of chair and vice chair of the Council,
respectively, are Ronnie Sue Thierman of San Francisco and David Wray of
Chicago. Thierman, an actuarial vice president at Aon Consulting Corporation,
is beginning her third year on the Council and last year served as vice chair.
Wray, president of the Profit Sharing Council of America, is beginning his
second year; last year he served as vice chair of the Working Group on Orphan
Plans.
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