Tamar Frankel is Professor of Law at Boston University and the Chairwoman of the Institute’s Board of Advisors. A leading expert of fiduciary law, finance law, corporate governance, mutual funds and the regulation of the financial system, she is the author of numerous books, including: Fiduciary Law (2010), Trust and Honesty, America’s Business Culture at a Crossroad (2006), Securitization (2006). Frankel has published more than 70 articles and book chapters.

Brooksley Born is a retired partner of Arnold & Porter where she practiced for more than thirty years and was head of the firm’s derivatives practice. From 1996 to 1999, Ms. Born was chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that oversees futures and commodity option markets, and strongly advocated the need for federal regulation of the over-the-counter derivatives market, which played a significant role in the 2007-2008 financial crisis. She also served as a Commissioner on the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission from 2009 until early 2011, when the Commission issued its report on the causes of the financial crisis and resulting economic crisis. Currently, she is a member of the Systemic Risk Council, an independent non-partisan group dedicated to regulatory reform of U.S. financial markets.

Phyllis C. Borzi was the Assistant Secretary for Employee Benefits Security of the U.S. Department of Labor from 2009 – 2017, during which she was instrumental in advancing the Conflict of Interest Rule. Prior to serving as Assistant Secretary, Borzi was a research professor in the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University’s Medical Center’s School of Public Health and Health Services where she was involved in research and policy analysis. She was also of counsel to the Washington, D.C. law firm of O’Donoghue & O’Donoghue LLP, specializing in ERISA and other legal issues affecting employee benefit plans.

Link to Phyllis Borzi’s full biography.

Dan Solin is the New York Times bestselling author of the Smartest series of investing books and The Smartest Sales Book You’ll Ever Read. He blogs regularly for Advisor Perspectives. Dan’s books have been enthusiastically endorsed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Vanguard founder John Bogle. Kiplinger’s listed The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read on its top ten list of the best financial books ever written. A former securities attorney, Dan graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Dan is a sales coach to advisory firms throughout North America. He gives presentations to large groups, conducts workshops and engages in one-on-one coaching either in person or via teleconferencing platforms like Skype.

Ron Rhoades is Associate Professor of Finance and the Director of Personal Financial Planning Program at Western Kentucky University. Rhoades is one of the most prolific authors of papers and comment letters on fiduciary duties for investment advisors and broker-dealers in this century. His many contributions to advancing fiduciary duties resulted in the Institute awarding him the Frankel Fiduciary Prize in 2020.

He has 30 years of experience as an attorney, and over 15 years as a personal financial adviser. He was a principal with an investment advisory firm where he served as its Director of Research and Chair of its Investment Committee. He is a member and former Chair of the Steering Committee of the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard, on whose behalf he travels to Washington, D.C. for meetings in Congress and with regulators.

Michael E. Kitces is Partner and Director of Research for Pinnacle Advisory Group, a private wealth management firm in Columbia, Maryland that oversees approximately $1 billion in client assets. He is the practitioner editor of the Journal of Financial Planning, and publisher of the e-newsletter The Kitces Report. He is also publisher of the popular financial planning industry blog Nerd’s Eye View through his website www.kitces.com, dedicated to advancing knowledge in financial planning. Michael is an active writer and editor across the industry and has been featured in publications including Financial Planning, the Journal of Financial Planning, Journal of Retirement Planning, Practical Tax Strategies, as well as The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, CNBC PowerLunch, and NBC Nightly News.

Deborah S. Bosley, Ph.D., is the Owner and Principal of The Plain Language Group, LLC. For the past twenty years, she has worked primarily in the financial services sector to create written information that meets regulatory requirements while being easy for customers to understand. Using proven writing and design strategies, training tools, and research results, she helps Fortune 100/500 companies achieve a number of critical goals including increasing profits; saving time and money; and improving customer trust. Deborah has published three books and dozens of articles about clear communication. She has given hundreds of presentations to organizations in the U.S., France, England, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Sweden, and others. Deborah also has written for, or been interviewed by Investment News, The Federal Reserve, The Wall Street Journal This Weekend radio broadcast, The Atlantic, Time Magazine, ThriveGlobal, Investment News, Business, N.C., Employee Benefit News, Entrepreneur, Transaction World Magazine, other print and social media. Deborah has been an expert witness in lawsuits that included her testimony on the “understandability” of 1) ERISA’s required Summary Plan Description and 2) state voting materials.

Robert Huebscher is a vice chairman of VettaFi, a data, analytics, and thought leadership company serving asset managers, advisors and investors. In 2007, he founded Advisor Perspectives. Under his leadership, Advisor Perspectives became the most widely read electronic newsletter among financial advisors and is generally regarded as the most influential source of investment and financial planning content for the advisory and planning professions. He sold Advisor Perspectives to VettaFi in October 2022. Prior to that, he was part of the management team of ByAllAccounts before its sale to Morningstar. He founded and was the CEO of Hub Data, a market data redistribution service he sold to Advent Software in 1997, and founded and led the software business for Technical Data before its sale to Thomson Financial in 1987.

Bob has a masters degree in business administration from the Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Connecticut College. He serves on the board of Caribou, a provider of services and technology to financial advisors to assist their clients with healthcare planning.

Stephen D. Johnson, CFP^® is the retired chairman of Johnson Lyman Wealth Advisors in Silicon Valley. An active leader in the financial planning profession, Steve has served on the national Boards of Directors of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) and the Financial Planning Association (FPA). He is a past president of the NAPFA West Region, the FPA of Silicon Valley and the FPA of Rhode Island, and was the founding president of the FPA of California. He served on the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee 222 where he helped write and was the final editor of ISO 22222:2005, Personal Financial Planning — Requirements for personal financial planners. As a member of the Institute’s Real Fiduciary Practices™ Board, he co-authored its Professional Conduct Guidance for Advisors. Prior to his career as a fee-only financial planning professional, Steve served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force. 

Rick Kahler, MS, CFP®, CFT-I™, CeFT® is a pioneer in integrating financial planning and psychology. Rick is one of the founders of financial therapy and has been recognized for his pioneering work in that field by InvestmentNews who gave Rick their 2019 annual Innovator Award and in 2018 by the Insiders Forum who named him and their annual Iconoclast Award recipient. He is also a founding board member and Past-Chair of the Financial Therapy Association. He is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor at Golden Gate University, a Finology Fellow, and a past chairman of the South Dakota Investment Council. His work and research has been featured or cited in scores of national and international periodicals and books. He is in his 30th year of writing a weekly column on personal finance that appears in several newspapers. He is a co-author of four books blending financial planning and therapy.

Dr. Woodrow W. Leake (2015 – 2020) was Edwin Lawrence Professor of [Political and Ideological] Communication at the University of Vermont. After leaving academe, he served as Executive Director and CEO of both the Brain Injury Association of Georgia and the Institute of Industrial Engineers, not-for-profit professional associations, and as Vice President for the Benjamin Franklin Center of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Leake was actively involved in politics, both state-wide and local races. He was a strategic and tactical advisor to then-Governor Jimmy Carter for his second debate with President Gerald Ford. He moderated debates among contenders for the U. S. Senate and governor in two states. He also led campaigns for state races in the northeast, Georgia, and Florida. Dr. Leake is now retired and lives in Florida.

Leake served on the Institute’s Board of Advisors until his passing on April 13, 2020.

John C. Bogle was the founder of The Vanguard Group, Inc., and President of Vanguard’s Bogle Financial Markets Research Center. He created Vanguard in 1974 and served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer until 1996 and Senior Chairman until 2000. He had been associated with Wellington Management, a predecessor company, since 1951, and served as its CEO from 1965 to 1974. Bogle wrote ten books; his most recent, The Clash of Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation, was published in August 2012.