Manuel Stamatakis

Manuel “Manny” N. Stamatakis, 65, is Founder, Chairman and CEO of Valley Forge, Pa.-based Capital Management Enterprises (CME), one of the country’s leading employee benefits consulting company. Prominent in Philadelphia civic life, he is noted for his role in negotiating both the rescue and revitalization of the city’s historic shipyard and the creation of Drexel University’s College of Medicine. Second-generation Greek Stamatakis was raised in Canonsburg, Pa. in what he calls a lower middle class household. Parents Marsha and Nicholas hailed from Karpathos and Rhodes islands, and he credits his Yiayia for teaching him about saving the coins he earned shining shoes at the local coffeehouse. A scholarship student and fraternity president, he studied industrial engineering at Penn State University. After graduation in 1969, however, he was more interested in pursuing a part-time job in insurance than his engineering work. Together with a partner, he founded his first company, Stamritt, Inc., before launching Stamatakis and Associates in 1972, a company he folded into CME in the 1980s. He also created with a group of colleagues, First Financial Resources in the 1980s, a producers’ group with 100 offices nation-wide. His insurance work first focused on individual retirement plans, before shifting into executive compensation and estate planning. In most recent decades, CME specializes in the lucrative business of group insurance and benefits consulting. He prides himself on saving corporate clients millions of dollars. Stamatakis has been involved, since age 26, in real estate development projects. He is currently involved in a casino plan for Philadelphia. On the civic side, he has been extensively involved in various ways in shaping the public life and business environment of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. In 1995 Governor Tom Ridge asked him to chair the Pennsylvania IMPACCT Commission, which was charged with finding ways to trim government spending in Pennsylvania. The Commission identified over $5 billion dollars in potential savings. He chaired the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) between 1996 and 2003. He was pivotal in the effort to restore Philadelphia as a major shipbuilding center, helping to create a partnership with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the City of Philadelphia and the Federal Government to build the newest and most modern Commercial shipbuilding facility in the United States. He chaired, for 13 years, the Drexel University College of Medicine, an institution that he was involved in helping to create out of two ailing local medical institutions. He remains on the boards of both Drexel and its College of Medicine. The Manuel Stamatakis Endowment Scholarship for medical students has raised $2.5 million for Drexel’s future doctors through golf tournaments for students. He is an avid golfer. He serves on numerous boards, including serving as chairman of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, the Philadelphia Shipyard Development Corporation and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Investment Advisory Board. He is on the board of companies including Crowley Chemical Corporation and Mistras Group, Inc. He has, since the 1980s, raised “tens of millions,” according to Stamatakis, for Republican campaign fundraising, including the Presidential campaigns of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and President George W. Bush.