Norton Garfinkle

Norton Garfinkle is Chairman of the Future of American Democracy Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan foundation in partnership with Yale University Press and the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, dedicated to research and education aimed at renewing and sustaining the historic vision of American democracy. He is the author of The American Dream vs. the Gospel of Wealth: The Fight for a Productive Middle-Class Economy, and the editor with Daniel Yankelovich of Uniting America: Restoring the Vital Center to American Democracy. He is former Chairman of the George Washington University Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, former Chairman of the National Hospice Foundation, former Chairman of the Lamaze Institute for Family Education and former Chairman of the New York Landmarks Conservancy. He is Chairman of Princeton Scientific Capital Management, a financial investment company. He is also chairman of Princeton SciTech, an investment company that specializes in building new internet-based technology companies. Over the course of his career he has founded and or served as Chairman of a number of companies that were eventually acquired, including Brand Rating Research Corporation, a public opinion research company that provided a syndicated service to many consumer product companies, television networks, national magazines, and major newspapers, Advanced Retail Marketing Corporation, an in-store marketing company, Oral Research Laboratories, and Electronic Retailing Systems International, which provided technology solutions to supermarket chains including the widely used self-checkout supermarket systems. Garfinkle received his B.A. with honors from Columbia University where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He did his graduate work at Columbia and Princeton Universities. He taught Economics and Economic History at Amherst College and was an editor of the Journal of Economic History.