Ray Boshara

The New America Foundation

Ray Boshara is Vice President of the New America Foundation and Senior Research Fellow.  He is now the senior advisor to New America's Education Policy Program.  Until 2009, he was Director of New America's Asset Building Program. He has advised the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and several presidential candidates, testified before the U.S. Congress, and given speeches all over the world on strategies to build savings, financial security, and wealth for low- and moderate-income persons.  Many of his ideas to promote financial security have been included in bi-partisan legislation or become law, including legislation to create savings accounts at birth for every child born in America.  His book, The Next Progressive Era, co-authored with New America Schwartz Senior Fellow Phillip Longman, will be published in April 2009.

Boshara has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, New York Daily News, and the Brookings Institution, and he has appeared on CNBC, C-SPAN and several radio programs across the nation. He is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and serves on many national commissions and advisory boards, including the Commission on Thrift.  He also serves as a consultant to the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Prior to joining New America, he worked for the Select Committee on Hunger in the U.S. Congress, the United Nations in Rome, CFED, and the Aspen Institute. He began his career as a Certified Public Accountant, working for Ernst & Whinney (now Ernst & Young). 

Boshara is a graduate of Ohio State University, Yale Divinity School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He was named a PaceSetter at Ohio State, a Littauer Fellow at Harvard and one of America's Best and Brightest by Esquire magazine in 2002.