Next General Club Meeting: Thurs. Jan. 11, 2018 at 7:30 pm

2018 HAPPY NEW YEAR KICK-OFF MEETING!!

“The new golden era for America
and the Republican Party”

Guest Speaker: Harry Wilson

Founder and CEO of MAEVA Group, LLC. Past senior advisor of the U.S. Treasury Department. Republican candidate for NYS Comptroller in 2010. He will not run for governor in 2018. Read “Special Announcement from Harry Wilson on his Candidacy for Governor.”

Guest Speaker: Dan DeBono

Veteran of the United States Navy SEALs. Committeeman for the Town of Huntington Republican Committee. Running for Congress in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

See bios below

Installation of 2018 Club Officers and Board Members

Other speakers to be announced

Meeting at: Bellerose Jewish Center
254-04 Union Tpke., Floral Park, NY 11004

HARRY WILSON

Harry Wilson, the Founder and CEO of MAEVA Group, LLC, is a nationally-recognized expert in corporate restructurings, turnarounds and transformations and in leading businesses through complicated transitions, as an investor/owner, advisor or director. His work has focused particularly on positioning troubled companies to grow, create jobs and create value for years after the restructuring work is complete.

Mr. Wilson spent his early career as an investor at some of the nation’s top financial firms, working primarily to invest in and to improve companies. Most of this period he spent at The Blackstone Group, the world’s largest private equity firm, and credit investment fund Silver Point Capital, where he was a partner. Earlier in his career, Mr. Wilson worked at the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and in the investment banking division of Goldman, Sachs & Co. Throughout most of his time at these firms, Mr. Wilson led complicated transactions, as an investor and often board member, across a broad range of industries and geographies, working closely and collaboratively with senior management. These transactions typically involved major operational and/or financial transformations; significant acquisitions or asset sales; and/or strategic transitions at the company.

In 2009, Mr. Wilson served as a Senior Advisor in the United States Department of the Treasury. He worked as one of the four leaders of the Auto Task Force, which was responsible for the Treasury’s role in the restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler. Mr. Wilson led a team that was responsible for the business and financial work of the Task Force and also led a team overseeing the financial and operational restructuring of General Motors. For the latter effort, Mr. Wilson and his team worked closely with senior management to help develop a new operating plan that dramatically reduced GM’s fixed cost structure and transformed its balance sheet.

In 2010, Mr. Wilson was the Republican nominee for New York State Comptroller, running on a platform to fix New York’s finances. In his first and only political campaign, Mr. Wilson’s honest, data-driven approach won him bipartisan accolades, secured the support of nearly every editorial board in the state (an unprecedented feat for a challenger and including The New York Times) while attracting approximately 2.1 million votes in what was a very narrow loss to the incumbent, but delivering – by far – the best Republican statewide challenger showing in New York State since George Pataki in 1994.

Currently, Mr. Wilson is the founder and CEO of MAEVA Group, LLC, a boutique restructuring firm he founded in 2011. MAEVA focuses primarily on investing in or acquiring companies undergoing major change, or advising companies going through similar operational or financial transformations, so that these companies can better compete and thrive in the future.

Mr. Wilson currently serves on the boards of Visteon Corporation and Sotheby’s. He has also served on the boards of Yahoo! (2012-2013) and YRC Worldwide (2011-2014), as well as a number of successful private companies earlier in his career. In each of his recent director roles, he was asked to join the board by one or more major investors who wanted him to work with senior management and the Board to help better position the respective company for long-term growth and success. Through this work, Mr. Wilson’s efforts have helped save tens of thousands of jobs and helped to create billions of dollars in shareholder value.

Mr. Wilson has been active in philanthropic and policy circles. He served as a Presidential Appointee to the Advisory Committee of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the federal agency responsible for insuring the pension benefits of private sector employees. In 2011 he completed an appointment to the bipartisan Pension Advisory Group for the State of Rhode Island (which passed the most sweeping pension reform in the country on the basis of this work), and he serves on three not-for-profit boards (Youth, INC, a venture philanthropy not-for-profit focused on troubled New York City youth; The Hellenic Initiative; and Scarsdale Youth Basketball). He is also a regular contributor and guest host on CNBC and Bloomberg.

Mr. Wilson has an A.B. in government, with honors, from Harvard College (making him the first in his direct family line to graduate from college) and an MBA from Harvard Business School. In high school, Mr. Wilson was selected as one of 141 United States Presidential Scholars, considered one of the nation’s highest honors for high school students. He and his wife of 19 years, Eva Romas Wilson, have four daughters and reside in Westchester County, NY.

DAN DEBONO

Dan DeBono was born in Syosset and is a lifelong resident of Northport, where he was raised by an extended Irish and Italian family that included teachers, cops, and nuns. His father, grandfathers, brothers and he are all veterans of one of the armed services, including the Navy, the Army, or the New York City Police Department.

Dan graduated from public high school in Northport, and earned a Navy ROTC Scholarship to Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. He majored in Mathematics, played Division I soccer and lacrosse, and captained the Men’s soccer team.

Inspired by the events in Panama in December 1989, Dan volunteered and was selected for the Navy SEALs, and became class leader of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training class 173, where he jointly set the class 2-mile ocean swim record.

​Assigned to SEAL Team TWO in Norfolk, Virginia, Dan completed one overseas tour in theatre during the Bosnian War, where he conducted numerous joint training operations with various NATO allies, among other things. He also specialized in joint special warfare submarine operations.

Upon his return to civilian life, and inspired by its great free market and philosophical thinkers,
Dan attended the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business and earned a Master’s Degree in Business Administration with High Honors, with a concentration in finance.

​He spent the next 20 years in finance and investing, first as a banker advising some of the world’s largest media and telecommunications companies, and then as an institutional investor where he invested capital on behalf of public pension funds, university endowments, and other institutions and individuals. Dan now runs a small investment and advisory business in New York.

Dan is a Committeeman for the Town of Huntington Republican Committee. He assisted the campaign of Town of Huntington Supervisor-Elect Chad Lupinacci. He formally and informally assisted both Governor Mitt Romney and Mayor Rudy Giuliani in their respective presidential campaigns, and has been active with the Navy SEAL Foundation. Dan and his wife, Genieve, reside in Northport with their 2 children and 2 cairn terriers.

See website http://www.debonoforcongress.com/