Harvey L. Pitt
Biography
Strategic Advisor, Independent Board Member
Harvey L. Pitt is the Chief Executive Officer of the global business consulting firm, Kalorama Partners, LLC. Prior to founding Kalorama Partners, Mr. Pitt was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as the twenty-sixth Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. In that role, from 2001 until 2003, Mr. Pitt was responsible, among other things, for overseeing the SEC’s response to the market disruptions resulting from the terrorist attacks of 9/11, for creating the SEC’s “real time enforcement” program, and for leading the Commission’s adoption of dozens of rules in response to the corporate and accounting crises generated by the excesses of the 1990s.
For nearly a quarter of a century before becoming the Commission’s Chairman, Mr. Pitt was a senior corporate partner in the international law firm, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. He also was a founding trustee and the first President of the SEC Historical Society, and participated in a wide variety of bar and continuing legal education activities to further public consideration of significant corporate and securities law issues. Mr. Pitt served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center (1975-84), George Washington University Law School (1974-82) and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law (1983-84).
Former Chairman Pitt served previously with the SEC, from 1968 until 1978, including three years as the Commission’s General Counsel (1975-78). Mr. Pitt started at the SEC as a staff attorney in the Commission’s Office of General Counsel (1968), and served in the following capacities over the next decade: Legal Assistant to SEC Commissioner Francis M. Wheat (1969); Special Counsel in the Office of the General Counsel of the SEC (1970-72); Editor of the SEC’s Institutional Investor Study Report (1972); Chief Counsel of the SEC’s Division of Market Regulation (1972-73); and Executive Assistant to SEC Chairman Ray Garrett, Jr. (1973-75).
Former Chairman Pitt received a J.D. degree from St. John’s University School of Law (1968), and his B.A. from the City University of New York (Brooklyn College) (1965). He was awarded an honorary LL.D. by St. John’s University School of Law in June 2002, and was given the Brooklyn College President’s Medal of Distinction in 2003.
Mr. Pitt is a member of the Audit Committees of the Washington National Cathedral School and Approva Corporation.