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Senator John Sununu

Senator John Sununu (R-NH) carved a unique path from the private sector to public office, serving for three terms in the House of Representatives and for six years as the youngest member of the United States Senate. Before entering public service, Sununu worked for emerging high-tech firms as an engineer, strategy consultant, and Chief Financial Officer. In Congress, he put his private sector expertise to work for the country, serving on Senate committees such as Commerce, Finance, Banking, and Foreign Relations.

As one of the few members of Congress with a technical background, Sununu rose quickly to earn a seat on the House Appropriations Committee and served as Vice Chairman of the Budget Committee. During his term in the Senate, Sununu provided leadership in areas of finance and technology, figuring prominently in debates addressing funding for telecommunications policy, medical information technology, and the National Science Foundation.

In the Senate, John Sununu took a lead role in pressing for regulatory reform, writing legislation to reign in the risk-taking at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that was signed into law in 2008.He led the effort to protect the Internet from unnecessary and unreasonable regulations, and negotiated a seven year ban on Internet taxes.He was the author of the New England Wilderness Act, as well as legislation that ensured broader protections for civil liberties under the PATRIOT Act.

He has traveled extensively in the Middle East and Central Asia, leading delegations to monitor the Palestinian Presidential elections in 2005, and the Lebanese Parliamentary elections in June 2009.He is member of the Mid-East Working Group at the U.S. Institute for Peace.

From 2008-2009, Sununu served as a member or the Congressional Oversight Panel for the $700 Billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Time Warner Cable, Boston Scientific, and ConvergEx Group, LLC.

Senator Sununu holds BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard University. He and his wife Kitty have three children.

Harold E. Ford, Jr

Currently the chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, Ford spent a decade as a member of the United States House of Representatives and was a 2006 Senate candidate. Described by President Clinton as "the walking, living embodiment of where America ought to go in the 21st century," U. S. Representative Harold Ford, Jr. (D-Tenn.) has distinguished himself as a charismatic, results-oriented politician with fresh ideas and a pragmatic approach.

Elected in 1996 to Tennessee's 9th congressional district, Ford was re-elected four times by an average of 80 percent of the vote. He built a reputation on Capitol Hill as a consensus builder while serving on the House Budget Committee, the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Known to his colleagues as a fiscal watchdog conservative, Ford played an active role as a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of moderate and fiscally conservative Democrats seeking middle-ground, bipartisan answers to the current challenges facing our country. As a pro-business Democrat, Ford believed then and now that solving problems should always overshadow bitter partisanship.

In 2006, Ford lost a close and controversial U.S. Senate race in Tennessee. Since then, he has moved to New York City, married Emily Frances Ford, and now works as a Vice Chairman at Bank of America and as a Distinguished Practitioner in Residence at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service. In addition, Ford serves on the Pentagon’s Transformation Advisory Board, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is an overseer at the International Rescue Committee.

Ford graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1996 and earned a bachelors degree in American history from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992.