Edward Conard

Edward Conard
Born	Edward Walter Conard
Residence	New York, New York
Alma mater	B.S.E. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor M.B.A. 1982 Harvard Business School
Employer	self - independent director Managing Director at Bain Capital Director at Wasserstein Perella Manager at Bain & Company Engineer at Ford Motor Company
Spouse(s)	Jill A. Davis (m. May 13, 2000)
Website	www.edwardconard.com

Edward W. "Ed" Conard is an American businessman, author and scholar. He is the author of Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong, a top ten New York Times best-selling book published in 2012, and the upcoming book The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class ^[1] (Sept 13, 2016). He is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.^[2] Previously, he was a managing director at Bain Capital, where he worked closely with his friend and colleague, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.^[3]

Early life and education

Conard graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S.E. in Operations Research in 1978.^[2] He earned his M.B.A. with distinction from Harvard Business School in 1982.^[2]

Career

Early career

Prior to business school, Conard worked as an automotive engineer at Ford Motor Company. After graduating, he joined Bain & Company, the Boston-based global management-consulting firm, eventually becoming a vice president and leading the firm’s industrial practice.^[3]

Conard left Bain in 1990 to become a director at Wasserstein Perella & Co., a boutique investment bank. At Wassernstein, he headed the firm's Transaction Development Group.^[3]

Bain Capital

Conard was a managing director at Bain Capital, the head of Bain's New York office and the leader of its industrial practice.^[4] He joined the firm in 1993 prior to the firm raising $300 million of private equity.^[5] When Conard retired in 2007, Bain Capital managed $75 billion of capital and had offices in Boston, New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Mumbai.^[5] His first acquisition was that of a pharmaceutical company for half a billion dollars. That same company later rose to more than $10 billion in value.^[6]

While at Bain Capital, Conard took Waters Corporation, DDI, ChipPac, Innophos, and Sensata public and sat on their boards of directors.^{[7][8][9][10]} He still sits on the board of Waters Corporation.^[11]

Writing, speaking, and scholar career

Conard published Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong in May 2012.^[12] The book was featured on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine and went on to become a New York Times top ten non-fiction bestseller.^[13] Since its publication, Mr. Conard has made over 100 television appearances in which he has debated leading economists including Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Alan Krueger, Austan Goolsbee, and Jared Bernstein; journalists including Fareed Zakaria, Chris Hayes, and Andrew Ross Sorkin; and politicians such as Barney Frank, Howard Dean, and Eliot Spitzer.^[14] Conard also debated Jon Stewart for 33 minutes, one of Stewart’s longest interviews.^[15] The video of the debate has received nearly 100,000 views. He has also written op-eds for The Wall Street Journal,^[16] The Washington Post,^[17] Foreign Affairs,^[18] Harvard Business Review,^[19] Fortune,^[20] and Politico,^[21] among others.

While the New York Times predicted the book might become “the most hated book of the year,”^[3] leading economists such as Greg Mankiw, Andrei Shleifer, Steven Levitt, Nouriel Roubini, Tyler Cowen, and Glenn Hubbard publicly endorsed the book.^[22] In contrast to the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal called the book “a full throttle defense of economic dynamism…refreshing at a time when so many take the failure of capitalism for granted.”^[23] The New York Times described Unintended Consequences as “…arguing that growing income inequality shows the economy is working.” Timothy Noah, the author of The Great Divergence: America's Growing Inequality noted: “the biggest surprise, on opening Unintended Consequences, lies in discovering that this book isn't about income inequality at all.”^[24] The book analyzes why the U.S. has outperformed other high-wage economies, explains the causes the financial crisis, and makes recommendations for accelerating growth in its aftermath.^[12] Conard summarizes his book in a 23-minute video for The UP Experience.^[25]

Because of the publicity surrounding the publication of his book, Conard was the tenth most searched author on Google in 2012.^[26] Conard joined the American Enterprise Institute as a visiting fellow in 2012.^[27] His work with AEI focuses on U.S. economic policy - in particular, on the effect of taxes, government policies, and finance on risk-taking and innovation.^[2]

Political activities

Conard made a $1 million U.S. dollar contribution to the super PAC promoting Mitt Romney's candidacy in the U.S. Presidential Election 2012 through W Spann LLC, a shell corporation that rendered him anonymous. He immediately came forward to quell the controversy that arose.^[28][29]

Personal life

Conard is married to Jill Davis, a two-time New York Times bestselling novelist and a former writer for the Late Show with David Letterman.^[30]

References

External links

• Ed Conard official website
• List of Ed Conard media appearances
• List of Ed Conard op ed articles
• Ed Conard on The Daily Show with John Stewart
• Appearances on C-SPAN