Bradley Tusk

Bradley Tusk (Born October 3, 1973) is the founder and CEO of Tusk Holdings, the parent company of Tusk Ventures, Tusk Strategies, Ivory Gaming Group, Kronos Archives, and the Tusk Montgomery Family Foundation. He also served as the campaign manager for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s successful 2009 re-election bid,as Deputy Governor of Illinois, as Communications Director for US Senator Chuck Schumer and as special assistant to Mayor Bloomberg.

Tusk Ventures

Tusk Ventures, founded in 2015 by Bradley Tusk, works with startups to navigate through government, politics, media, unions and anything else that could impact the company's growth. Davey Alba explained the need in Wired: "It's almost an assumed part of the deal that at some point the most successful startups will have to go up against the government." Seth Fiegerman writes in Mashable that Tusk Ventures "is selling what some startups desperately want to buy: advice on how to beat the system."

Current companies in Tusk Ventures' portfolio include Uber, Handy, Ripple, Eaze, FanDuel and General Assembly.

Tusk Strategies

Tusk is the founder of Tusk Strategies, a political and strategic consulting firm based in New York City. The firm develops and runs multi-jurisdictional campaigns for clients including Google, Walmart, AT&T, Expedia, political leaders such as Mike Bloomberg, media companies including AMC, NBC News, The Weather Channel, Discovery, Cablevision, and institutions like Stanford University. He has also led campaigns for individuals, such as former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Tusk Strategies also leads major issue advocacy campaigns around education reform and good government; campaigns to help political candidates, non-profits and trade associations.

Tusk Strategies has led 72 campaigns in 41 states throughout the United States.

Ivory Gaming Group

Ivory Gaming Group was co-founded by Bradley Tusk and Christian Goode in 2015 to develop and manage casinos, including their day-to-day operations which include food and beverage services, marketing and media. A recent example is the role Ivory Gaming is playing in the reopening of Chukchansi Gold Resort & Casino near Fresno, California.

Kronos Archives

Kronos Archives is a company founded by Tusk which creates personal digital libraries for clients using any and all media such as videos, photos, documents and more to tell the story of a family, individual, company or institution. The finished product is searchable, metatagged and fully digitized.

Tusk Montgomery Family Foundation

Along with his wife, Harper Montgomery, Tusk created the Tusk Montgomery Family Foundation. The Foundation is a new model of philanthropy, bringing best-in-class advocacy and political strategy to the issue of food insecurity at the state and local level. The Foundation provides sophisticated political counsel and expertise to hunger advocacy groups and food banks in cities and states across the country.

Michael Bloomberg Campaign

Tusk served as campaign manager for Michael Bloomberg’s successful 2009 re-election for mayor. In referring to Tusk's role with the Bloomberg campaign, the New York Times said: "Mr. Tusk’s high level of organization, and his demand for corporate-style accountability, earned him admiration and occasional resentment within the campaign. He kept meticulous checklists and spreadsheets on a dozen topics at a time, and sought daily, sometimes hourly, updates from staff members. Over the summer, he ordered staff members to work until 8 every night. They were unhappy, and let him know it. He refused to back down, worried the large staff was becoming complacent. Yet the campaign rarely, if ever, missed an internal deadline, and it committed few serious missteps." The New York Observer described Tusk as "Mayor Bloomberg's Secret Weapon." Tusk was recently named one of the “Top 20 most influential people in New York City."

Lehman Brothers

After serving as Deputy Governor, Tusk served as Senior Vice President at Lehman Brothers, where he created the lottery monetization group and headed all of its efforts regarding U.S. based lotteries. Combining his backgrounds in finance and politics, Tusk developed a successful framework to help state's monetize their lotteries.

Illinois Deputy Governor

Prior to serving as campaign manager for Bloomberg 2009, Tusk, who previously had not been a resident of Illinois, served as Deputy Governor of the State of Illinois from 2003–2006, where he oversaw the state finances, policy, legislation, communications, and operations, including a $60 million budget and a workforce of 57,000. Under his tenure, Illinois became the first state to guarantee health care for all children, the first state to offer pre-school to all 3 and 4 year olds, the first state to import prescription drugs from Europe and Canada, and the first state to convert its entire tollway system to Open Road Tolling. Under Tusk's leadership, Illinois reduced its state workforce by 20% without raising taxes.

Special Advisor to Michael Bloomberg

Before his appointment as Deputy Governor, Tusk served as Special Advisor to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, where he led the successful effort to re-write the New York City charter and created the Mayor's campaign promise index, making Bloomberg the nation's first public official to publicly report on the status of every one of his campaign promises.

Communications Director for Senator Schumer

Prior to joining the Bloomberg Administration, Tusk served as Communications Director for United States Senator Charles Schumer, handling communications, strategy and policy for the Senator, most notably in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on New York City.

Advisor to Parks Commissioner

Tusk also served as Senior Advisor and spokesman to New York City Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, and was an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University.

Education, honors and other associations

Tusk is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where he received his BA in 1995. He has a JD from the University of Chicago Law School, which he received in 1999. Tusk was named to Crain’s Business Weekly’s 40 under 40. He serves on the boards of Creative Time, StoryCorps and the New York advisory board of the Trust for Public Land.