M. Peter McPherson
Melville Peter McPherson is the president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. He served as a special assistant to President Gerald Ford, administrator of USAID under President Ronald Reagan, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Department, president of Michigan State University from 1993 to 2004, Chairman of Dow Jones. McPherson was born in Michigan. McPherson received his undergraduate degree from Michigan State University in 1963. Returning from the Peace Corps, McPherson earned a master's in business administration from Western Michigan University in 1967 and a law degree from American University in Washington in 1969. McPherson and his wife, have four children and six grandchildren, his public service career began as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru, where during 1965 and 1966 he spent 18 months in a Peruvian slum running a food distribution program and setting up credit unions. He called the experience a defining moment and said his experience in the Peace Corps helped him learn how to adapt.
"When I was a Peace Corps volunteer, it was just a different culture," McPherson said. "I found I couldn't be effective. It's just a matter of asking people what they want to get done, finding out what the formal and informal rules are and figuring out ways to do things differently, while doing practical work in that environment, but that process was a challenge." After law school, he worked for the Internal Revenue Service, where his specialty was international taxation. He joined the administration of fellow Michigander Gerald Ford in 1975 as special assistant to the President. Dick Cheney was White House Chief of Staff. After his government service in the Ford administration, he worked in private law practice as managing partner of the Washington office of Vorys, Sater and Pease, an Ohio law firm. In November, 1980 he was named general counsel to the Reagan-Bush transition. McPherson held several high-level positions in President Ronald Reagan's administration including administrator of USAID from 1981 to 1987 where he led the U.
S. response to the famine in Africa. "At AID, you learn the process of deciding as a group large issues," McPherson said. McPherson's interest in world humanitarian and agricultural issues has made a difference for millions of people. While administrator of USAID he was chair of the board of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. McPherson served as Deputy Secretary of the U. S. Treasury Department from 1987 to 1989. After his service in the Reagan administration, McPherson worked for Bank of America from 1989 to 1993 managing $600 million as the bank's executive vice president. In 1993 he was selected to become President of Michigan State University from 171 publicly identified candidates, effective October 1. During his tenure as President of MSU, the school's international undergraduate study program became the nation's largest. McPherson gets credit as the only president of a major university to keep tuition at the rate of inflation and for spearheading a $1 billion capital fund-raising campaign and for bringing a private law school to the 45,000-student campus.
McPherson retired from MSU in 2004. Many of the crimes committed by MSU faculty member Larry Nassar as part of the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal occurred during McPherson's tenure. McPherson took a leave of absence as President of MSU in 2003 to serve as the Director of Economic Policy for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq, where he helped establish a central bank and develop a new currency. In August, 2004, McPherson, who spent four months in Iraq, was among five recipients presented with the Distinguished Service Award by U. S. Treasury Secretary John Snow for his service in Iraq. In February 2007 Dow Jones & Co. named McPherson chairman of the company during its annual shareholding meeting on April 18. McPherson replaced Peter Kann. McPherson had served as an independent director of Dow Jones since 1998; as Chairman of Dow Jones & Co. McPherson was involved in the negotiations with Rupert Murdoch over Murdoch's plan to purchase the Wall Street Journal; the Financial Times reported on December 13, 2007 that McPherson led the final annual meeting of Dow Jones where stockholders voted to approve the $5 billion sale of the 125-year-old company including the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.
"I know I speak for so many today when I say that this has been a difficult—and for many—a sad set of discussions," said McPherson, offering "great expectations and hopes" for the future. Aside from his duties as Chairman of Dow Jones, McPherson is a Founding Co-Chair and serves as a Director of the Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa. McPherson is a member of Washington D. C. based think tank the Inter-American Dialogue. He serves as the president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities; as President of the APLU, McPherson has been a prime mover behind "College Portrait," a template for information that public, four-year institutions will provide online in an comparable way. College Portrait has three parts: student and family information, student experiences and perceptions, student learning outcomes. "If we can't figure out how to measure ourselves, someone else will figure out how to measure us," McPherson said. "It's inevitable." McPherson says that universities need to focus on the big picture and support the new system or the federal government will come in and define how assessment will take place.
"If we wait for the perfect test, we'd be waiting 10 years from now," says McPherson. "You need to take a step like this to force the pace," McPherson added. McPherson was appointed by the white house in 2002 as the new chairman to the Board for Internatio
Neal S. Wolin
Neal Steven Wolin is the CEO of the corporate advisory firm Brunswick Group, an equity partner of Data Collective, a board partner of Social Capital, a limited partner advisor of Nyca Partners. He is the longest-serving Deputy Secretary of the U. S. Department of the Treasury, served as Acting Secretary of the Treasury in early 2013. In 2009, following eight years with The Hartford Financial Services Group, Wolin was appointed Deputy Secretary of the U. S. Department of the Treasury by President Barack Obama, where he led the U. S. government's financial reform plan during the Great Recession, including the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. He resigned as Deputy Secretary in August 2013. Wolin served during the Clinton administration for eight years, including as general counsel and Deputy General Counsel of the Treasury, as a staff member of the United States National Security Council. Wolin was born and raised in Evanston, where he graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1979.
His father, Harry S. Wolin, was a lawyer. Graduated summa cum laude with a B. A. in history from Yale University, Wolin served as president of the Yale Political Union. He received a M. S. in Development Economics from Oxford University, as a Charles and Julia Henry Fellow. D. from Yale University, where he was a Coker Teaching Fellow in Constitutional Law. Following law school, Wolin served as a law clerk to U. S. District Judge Eugene Nickerson in Brooklyn, New York, taught as an adjunct professor of law at Brooklyn Law School. Wolin worked at the Washington, D. C. law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. From 1990 to 1993, Wolin served as Special Assistant to three Directors of Central Intelligence: William H. Webster, Robert Gates, R. James Woolsey, Jr.. From 1993 to 1994, Wolin served as Deputy Legal Advisor to the National Security Council. In 1994, Wolin became an executive assistant to National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and Deputy National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. From 1995 to 1999, he served as the Deputy General Counsel of the Department of the Treasury, under Secretary Robert Rubin.
In November 1998, he was appointed to the President's Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. From September 15, 1999 to January 20, 2001, Wolin served as General Counsel of the U. S. Department of the Treasury, under Secretary Lawrence Summers. In January 2001, Secretary Summers presented Wolin the Alexander Hamilton Award, the highest honor awarded to a Treasury official. In early 2001, Wolin was visiting fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, an adjunct assistant professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In March 2001, Wolin joined The Hartford Financial Services Group as executive vice-president and general counsel, overseeing the company's legal and tax departments, government affairs and marketing functions. In 2007, he succeeded David K. Zwiener as president and COO of the company's property and casualty insurance subsidiaries. In February 2009, shortly after Barack Obama took office, Wolin returned to Washington, D. C. as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President for Economic Policy.
In March 2009, he was nominated as Deputy Secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury by President Obama confirmed by the senate on May 18, 2009. Wolin served as United States Acting Secretary of the Treasury from January 25 to February 28, 2013, prior to the confirmation of Jack Lew, nominated by Obama to succeed Secretary Timothy Geithner. Wolin was a "key architect" of U. S. financial reforms during the Great Recession, was instrumental to the development and implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The Act aimed to upgrade "the foundation for a stronger financial system – closing regulatory gaps, increasing transparency for consumers, strengthening prudential requirements,” including an annual “stress-test” by the Federal Reserve of the 33 banks designated as being “systemically important” to the U. S. economy. From early 2009 until late 2013, during his tenure as Deputy Treasury Secretary, Wolin chaired the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews, for national security reasons, any transaction that would result in a foreign entity having control over a U.
S. asset. In July 2011, Wolin was appointed to the Government Transparency Board. In January 2013, Wolin was awarded a second Alexander Hamilton Award by Secretary Timothy Geithner. On July 22, 2013, President Obama announced Wolin’s retirement as Deputy Secretary at the end of August 2013, stating that “His deep knowledge and excellent judgment helped us prevent a second Great Depression, pass tough new Wall Street reform, strengthen our financial system, foster growth here at home, promote economic development around the world.”In August 2014, he was appointed to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, from which he resigned on January 20, 2017. In February 2018, Wolin was appointed as CEO of the global corporate advisory firm Brunswick Group. Wolin is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, of the bars of Illinois and the District of Columbia. Current affiliations include: Member, Board of Overseers, RAND Institute for Civil Justice. Board partner, Social CapitalEquity partner, Data CollectiveLimited Partner Advisor, Nyca PartnersBoard member, WAVEBoard member, SIGFIGBoard member, APPRISSBoard member, TreliantBoard member, Partnership for Public ServiceBoard member, Atlantic CouncilAdvisor, Raptor Intelligence, Inc.
Advisor, Jupiter IntelligenceAdvisor, Covr Advisory Board, Covr Financial Technolog
Community Development Financial Institutions Fund
The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund promotes economic revitalization in distressed communities throughout the United States by providing financial assistance and information to community development financial institutions. An agency of the United States Department of the Treasury, it was established through the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act of 1994. Financial institutions, which may include banks, credit unions, loan funds, community development venture capital funds, can apply to the CDFI Fund for formal certification as a CDFI; as of September 1, 2005, there were 747 certified CDFIs in the U. S; the CDFI Fund offers a variety of financial programs to provide capital to CDFIs, such as the Financial Assistance Program, Technical Assistance Program, Bank Enterprise Award Program, the New Markets Tax Credit Program. One of the oldest nonprofit loan funds in the United States, Enterprise Community Loan Fund - a subsidiary of Enterprise Community Partners has loaned more than $725 million to help build or renovate 91,000 affordable homes.
They offer local funds in Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City. Other, larger nonprofit loan funds have invested nearly $2 billion per loan fund including Low Income Investment Fund, Boston Community Capital, Reinvestment Fund, Capital Impact Partners, Local Initiatives Support Corp and Self-Help. Within the field, only a handful of CDFIs have achieved an investment grade rating from Standard & Poor - including Local Initiative Support Corp, Reinvestment Fund, Capital Impact Partners. In 1998, City First Bank was certified as DC's first CDFI bank. Since and as of December 31, 2015, City First has channeled over $1 billion of capital into low and moderate income communities. $422 in New Markets Tax Credits have help to build institutions such as THEARC in deep southeast, DC where over 80% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Loans towards small businesses, affordable housing, educational facilities, the arts, health centers have totaled $591, fueling DC's renewed economy and culture.
Title 12 of the Code of Federal Regulations Official website Community Development Financial Institutions Fund in the Federal Register
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Prior to the presidency, he was the governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, again from 1983 to 1992, the attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979. A member of the Democratic Party, Clinton was ideologically a New Democrat, many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy. Clinton was born and raised in Arkansas and attended Georgetown University, University College and Yale Law School, he met Hillary Rodham at Yale and married her in 1975. After graduating, Clinton returned to Arkansas and won election as the Attorney General of Arkansas, serving from 1977 to 1979; as Governor of Arkansas, he overhauled the state's education system and served as chairman of the National Governors Association. Clinton was elected president in 1992. At age 46, he became the first from the Baby Boomer generation. Clinton presided over the longest period of peacetime economic expansion in American history.
He signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement but failed to pass his plan for national health care reform. In the 1994 elections, the Republican Party won unified control of the Congress for the first time in 40 years. In 1996, Clinton became the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to be elected to a second full term, he passed welfare reform and the State Children's Health Insurance Program, as well as financial deregulation measures, including the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. In 1998, Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice following allegations that he committed perjury and obstructed justice to conceal an affair that he had with Monica Lewinsky, a 22-year old White House Intern. Clinton was completed his term in office, he is only the second U. S. president—following Andrew Johnson 131 years earlier—to be impeached. During the last three years of Clinton's presidency, the Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus, the first such surplus since 1969.
In foreign policy, Clinton ordered U. S. military intervention in the Bosnian and Kosovo wars, signed the Iraq Liberation Act in opposition to Saddam Hussein, participated in the 2000 Camp David Summit to advance the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, assisted the Northern Ireland peace process. Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any U. S. president since World War II, has continually scored high in the historical rankings of U. S. presidents placing in the top third. Since leaving office, he has been involved in humanitarian work, he created the William J. Clinton Foundation to address international causes such as the prevention of AIDS and global warming, he has remained active in politics by campaigning for Democratic candidates, including the presidential campaigns of his wife and Barack Obama. In 2004, Clinton published My Life. In 2009, he was named the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti and after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, he teamed with George W. Bush to form the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.
In addition, he secured the release of two American journalists imprisoned by North Korea, visiting the capital Pyongyang and negotiating their release with Kim Jong-il. Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, Arkansas, he is the son of William Jefferson Blythe Jr. a traveling salesman who had died in an automobile accident three months before his birth, Virginia Dell Cassidy. His parents had married on September 4, 1943, but this union proved to be bigamous, as Blythe was still married to his third wife. Virginia traveled to New Orleans to study nursing soon after Bill was born, leaving him in Hope with her parents Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who owned and ran a small grocery store. At a time when the southern United States was racially segregated, Clinton's grandparents sold goods on credit to people of all races. In 1950, Bill's mother returned from nursing school and married Roger Clinton Sr. who co-owned an automobile dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas with his brother and Earl T. Ricks.
The family moved to Hot Springs in 1950. Although he assumed use of his stepfather's surname, it was not until Clinton turned 15 that he formally adopted the surname Clinton as a gesture toward his stepfather. Clinton said that he remembered his stepfather as a gambler and an alcoholic who abused his mother and half-brother, Roger Clinton Jr. to the point where he intervened multiple times with the threat of violence to protect them. In Hot Springs, Clinton attended St. John's Catholic Elementary School, Ramble Elementary School, Hot Springs High School, where he was an active student leader, avid reader, musician. Clinton was in the chorus and played the tenor saxophone, winning first chair in the state band's saxophone section, he considered dedicating his life to music, but as he noted in his autobiography My Life: Clinton began an interest in law at Hot Springs High, when he took up the challenge to argue the defense of the ancient Roman Senator Catiline in a mock trial in his Latin class.
After a vigorous defense that made use of his "budding rhetorical and political skills", he told the Latin teacher Elizabeth Buck that it "made him realize that someday he would study law". Clinton has identified two influential moments in his life, both occurring in 1963, that contributed to his decision to become a public figure. One was his visit as a Boys Nation senator to
Steven Mnuchin
Steven Terner Mnuchin is an American investment banker, serving as the 77th United States Secretary of the Treasury as part of the Cabinet of Donald Trump. Mnuchin had been a hedge fund manager. After he graduated from Yale University in 1985, Mnuchin worked for investment bank Goldman Sachs for 17 years becoming its Chief Information Officer. After he left Goldman Sachs in 2002, he founded several hedge funds. Mnuchin was a member of Sears Holdings’s board of directors from 2005 until December 2016, before, on Kmart's board of directors. During the financial crisis of 2007–2008, Mnuchin bought failed residential lender IndyMac, he changed the name to OneWest Bank and rebuilt the bank sold it to CIT Group in 2015. Mnuchin joined Trump's presidential campaign in 2016, was named national finance chairman for the campaign. On February 13, 2017, Mnuchin was confirmed to be President Donald Trump's Secretary of the Treasury by a 53–47 vote in the U. S. Senate; as Secretary of the Treasury, Mnuchin has been a vocal supporter of proposed tax reform, is an advocate for reducing corporate tax rates.
In regards to regulatory policy, Mnuchin supports a partial repeal of Dodd-Frank, citing the complexity of the legislation. Mnuchin's use of government aircraft for personal usage has come under scrutiny from watchdog groups. Steven Mnuchin was born on December 21, 1962, in New York City, the second-youngest son in his family. Mnuchin's family is Jewish, he is the son of Robert E. Mnuchin of Washington and Elaine Terner Cooper of New York. Robert Mnuchin was a partner at Goldman Sachs in charge of equity trading and a member of the management committee, he is the founder of an art gallery in New York City, the Mnuchin Gallery. Mnuchin's great-grandfather, Aaron Mnuchin, a Russian-born diamond dealer who resided in Belgium, emigrated to the U. S. in 1916. Mnuchin attended Riverdale Country School in New York City, he graduated from Yale University in 1985 with a bachelor's degree. At Yale, Mnuchin was publisher of the Yale Daily News, was initiated into Skull and Bones in 1985. Mnuchin's first job was as a trainee at investment bank Salomon Brothers in the early 1980s, while still studying at Yale.
When Mnuchin studied at Yale University, he lived in the former Taft Hotel in New Haven, Connecticut together with businessman Edward Lampert and lawyer Salem Chalabi as roommates. After Mnuchin graduated from Yale in 1985, he started working for Goldman Sachs, where his father was still working, since 1957. Mnuchin started in the mortgage department, became a partner at Goldman in 1994; until he left the company in 2002, Mnuchin held the following positions as a partner: November 1994 – December 1998: Head of the Mortgage Securities Department December 1998 – November 1999: Overseeing mortgages, U. S. governments, money markets, municipals at Fixed Income and Commodities Division December 1999 – February 2001: Member of the Executive Committee and co-head of the Technology Operating Committee February 2001 – December 2001: Executive Vice President and co-Chief Information Officer December 2001 – 2002: Executive Vice President, member of the Management Committee, Chief Information OfficerMnuchin left Goldman Sachs in 2002 after 17 years of employment, with an estimated $46 million of company stock and $12.6 million in compensation that he received in the months prior to his departure.
After he left Goldman Sachs in 2002, Mnuchin worked as vice-chairman of hedge fund ESL Investments, owned by his Yale roommate Edward Lampert. The following year, he established the company SFM Capital Management together with financier George Soros. Mnuchin founded a hedge fund called Dune Capital Management, named for a spot near his house in The Hamptons, in 2004 with two former Goldman partners. After its founding, Mnuchin served as the CEO of the company; the firm invested in at least two Donald Trump projects, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Honolulu and its namesake in Chicago. Dune Capital Management and other lenders to the skyscraper in Chicago were sued by Trump before a settlement was reached. Mnuchin was outbid by Lone Star Funds on a portfolio of residential mortgage-backed collateralized debt obligations being sold by Merrill Lynch during the financial crisis, which sold for $6.7 billion. Mnuchin has been criticized for his use of offshore entities for investment purposes as a hedge-fund manager, a common practice in the industry.
Mnuchin has stated: "In no way did I use to avoid U. S. taxes." In 2009, a group led by Mnuchin bought California-based residential lender IndyMac, in receivership by the FDIC and owned $23.5 billion in commercial loans and mortgage-backed securities. The purchase price was a $4.7 billion discount to its book value. Mnuchin's investment group included George Soros, hedge-fund manager John Paulson, former Goldman Sachs executive J. Christopher Flowers, Dell Computer founder Michael Dell; the FDIC agreed to retain some of the more problematic assets of the bank, signed a loss-sharing agreement. The FDIC was estimated to be required to pay $2.4 billion to IndyMac under the shared loss agreement. After purchasing IndyMac, renamed OneWest Bank, Mnuchin served as chairman. OneWest bought several other failed banks including First Federal Bank of California in 2009 and La Jolla Bank in 2010. Furthermore, OneWest bought a portfolio belonging to Citi Holdings for $1.4 billion. OneWest was profitable one year after Mnuchin had bought it, it became the largest bank of Southern California, with assets worth $27 billion.
In 2015, Mnuchin sold OneWest to CIT Group for $3.4 billion. After the acquisition by CIT, Mnuchin remained at OneWest
Kenneth W. Dam
Kenneth W. Dam served as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury from 2001 to 2003, where he specialized in international economic development, he is a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution and a professor emeritus and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. Kenneth Dam graduated from Marysville High School, Kansas in 1950, from the University of Kansas in 1954, earned his J. D. degree from the University of Chicago law school in 1957. He served as a law clerk to United States Supreme Court justice Charles Whittaker in 1957 and 1958, he became an associate at the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore until he joined the University of Chicago as a law professor in 1960, becoming provost in 1980. Dam held a number of government positions during various Republican administrations while on leave from the University of Chicago: Program Assistant Director for national security and international affairs at the Office of Management and Budget Executive Director of the White House Council on Economic Policy Deputy Secretary of State After leaving the Reagan administration in 1985, Dam became vice president for law and external relations at IBM until 1992.
He served as president and CEO of the United Way of America in 1992, helped lead an investigation of a publicized scandal in the leadership of that organization and reorganize its staff and governance. He rejoined the University of Chicago law school faculty, he has been an arbitrator, most notably from 1996 to 2001 under the collective bargaining agreement between professional basketball players and the National Basketball Association. Dam has served on the board of a number of public policy institutions, including the Council on Foreign Relations, the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, he was co-chairman of the Aspen Strategy Group from 1991 to 2001 and was, during 1999 and 2000, chairman of the German-American Academic Council. From 1987 to 2001 he was a member of the board of Alcoa, he is a former member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group. He first participated in their annual conference in 1983 when he was Under Deputy Secretary of State, he would miss only one conference between 1983 and 1997 and participate again in 2001 and 2002.
The Law-Growth Nexus: The Rule of Law and Economic Development, Brookings Institution Press, 2006 ISBN 0-8157-1720-2 The Rules of the Global Game: A New Look at US International Economic Playmaking, University Of Chicago Press, 2001 ISBN 0-226-13493-8 Economic Policy Beyond the Headlines, with George P. Shultz, University of Chicago Press, second edition 1998 ISBN 0-226-75599-1 The Rules of the Game: Reform and Evolution in the International Monetary System, University of Chicago Press, 1982 ISBN 0-226-13499-7 Oil Resources: Who Gets What How?, University of Chicago Press, 1978 ISBN 0-226-13498-9 University of Chicago law school biography of Kenneth Dam Brookings Institution announcement on Kenneth Dam's appointment as senior fellow Speech by Kenneth Dam on economic growth in Latin America Appearances on C-SPAN
Dean Acheson
Dean Gooderham Acheson was an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S. Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Marshall Plan and was a key player in the development of the Truman Doctrine and creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Acheson's most famous decision was convincing President Truman to intervene in the Korean War in June 1950, he persuaded Truman to dispatch aid and advisors to French forces in Indochina, though in 1968 he counseled President Lyndon B. Johnson to negotiate for peace with North Vietnam. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy called upon Acheson for advice, bringing him into the executive committee, a strategic advisory group. In the late 1940s Acheson came under heavy attack over Truman's policy toward China, for Acheson's defense of State Department employees accused during the anti-gay Lavender and anti-Communist Red Scare investigations by Senator Joseph McCarthy and others.
Dean Gooderham Acheson was born in Middletown, Connecticut on April 11, 1893. His father, Edward Campion Acheson, was an English-born Canadian who, after serving in The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada during the North-West Rebellion of 1885, became a Church of England priest after graduating from Wycliffe College and moved to the U. S. becoming an Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut. His mother, Eleanor Gertrude, was a Canadian-born descendant of William Gooderham, Sr. a founder of the Gooderham and Worts Distillery of Toronto. Like his father, Acheson was a staunch opponent of prohibition. Acheson attended Groton School and Yale College, where he joined Scroll and Key Society, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was a brother of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. At Groton and Yale he had the reputation of a prankster. Acheson's well-known, reputed arrogance—he disdained the curriculum at Yale as focusing on memorizing subjects known or not worth knowing more about—was apparent early. At Harvard Law School from 1915 to 1918, however, he was swept away by the intellect of professor Felix Frankfurter and finished fifth in his class.
On May 15, 1917, while serving in the National Guard, Acheson married Alice Caroline Stanley. She loved painting and politics and served as a stabilizing influence throughout their enduring marriage. On July 25, 1918, Acheson was commissioned as an ensign in the Naval Reserve and served with the Naval Overseas Transportation Service until he was released from active duty on December 31 of the same year. At that time, a new tradition of bright law students clerking for the U. S. Supreme Court had been begun by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, for whom Acheson clerked for two terms from 1919 to 1921. Frankfurter and Brandeis were close associates, future Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter suggested that Brandeis take on Acheson. Throughout his long career, Acheson displayed: exceptional intellectual power and purpose, tough inner fiber, he projected the long lines and aristocratic bearing of the thoroughbred horse, a self-assured grace, an acerbic elegance of mind, a charm whose chief attraction was its penetrating candor.... was swift-flowing and direct....
Acheson was perceived as an 18th century rationalist ready to apply an irreverent wit to matters public and private. A lifelong Democrat, Acheson worked at a law firm in Washington D. C. Covington & Burling dealing with international legal issues before Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed him Undersecretary of the Treasury in March 1933; when Secretary William H. Woodin fell ill, Acheson found himself acting secretary despite his ignorance of finance; because of his opposition to FDR's plan to deflate the dollar by controlling gold prices, he was forced to resign in November 1933 and resumed his law practice. In 1939–1940 he headed a committee to study the operation of administrative bureaus in the federal government. Brought back as assistant secretary of state on February 1, 1941, Acheson implemented much of United States economic policy aiding Great Britain and harming the Axis Powers. Acheson implemented the Lend-Lease policy that helped re-arm Great Britain and the American/British/Dutch oil embargo that cut off 95 percent of Japanese oil supplies and escalated the crisis with Japan in 1941.
Roosevelt froze all Japanese assets to disconcert them. He did not intend the flow of oil to Japan to cease; the president departed Washington for Newfoundland to meet with Churchill. While he was gone Acheson used those frozen assets to deny Japan oil. Upon the president's return, he decided it would appear weak and appeasing to reverse the de facto oil embargo. In 1944, Acheson attended the Bretton Woods Conference as the head delegate from the State department. At this conference the post-war international economic structure was designed; the conference was the birthplace of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the last of which would evolve into the World Trade Organization. In 1945, Harry S. Truman selected Acheson as his Undersecretary of United States Department of State. And, as late as 1945 or 1946 Acheson sought détente with the Soviet Union. In 1946, as chairman of
