Friends Of Soros

• Peter Lewis

  Peter B. Lewis, retired chairman, president, and chief executive officer of the Progressive Corporation, brings the same sensibilities to his philanthropy that he brings to business. He invests in people with a clear, creative, courageous vision who break new ground and show results.

  It is a philosophy that has worked well for Lewis. In 1965, in one of the first leveraged buyouts in history, he took control of a small Cleveland insurance company with $6 million in revenues specializing in drivers who had difficulty finding auto insurance. In 1996 he started funding Pro drug Initiatives and Organizations with George Soros.

• John Sperling-Dr. Sperling is the founder of Apollo Group, Inc. Dr. Sperling was the Chairman of the Board of Directors from its inception until June 2004, was President of Apollo Group, Inc. until February 1998 and Chief Executive Officer of Apollo Group, Inc. until August 2001. Prior to his involvement with Apollo Group, Inc., from 1961 to 1973, Dr. Sperling was a professor of Humanities at San Jose State University where he was the Director of the Right to Read Project and the Director of the NSF Cooperative College-School Science Program in Economics. At various times from 1955 to 1961, Dr. Sperling was a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland, Ohio State University, and Northern Illinois University. Dr. Sperling received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, an M.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and a B.A. from Reed College.  In 1996 he started funding Pro drug Initiatives and Organizations with George Soros.