Grand Valley State University is a public university in Allendale, Michigan, United States. It was established in 1960 as Grand Valley State College. Its main campus is situated on 1,322 acres (5.35 km2) approximately 12 miles (19 km) west of Grand Rapids. The university also features campuses in Grand Rapids and Holland and regional centers in Battle Creek, Detroit, Muskegon, and Traverse City.
Earl of Cranbrook is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, created in 1892 for Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, Viscount Cranbrook. The title is named after Cranbrook in the county of Kent. The Gathorne-Hardy family seat is Great Glemham House, near Saxmundham, Suffolk.
Tides Foundation is a left-leaning donor advised fund based in the United States. It was founded in San Francisco in 1976 by Drummond Pike. Tides distributes money from anonymous donors to other organizations, which are often politically progressive. An affiliated group, Tides Advocacy, is a "massive progressive incubator." Tides has received substantial funding from George Soros.
Frederick Henry Mueller was a U.S. cabinet officer. He served as the United States Secretary of Commerce from 1959 until 1961, during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
West Michigan and Western Michigan are terms for a region in the U.S. state of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Generally, it refers to the Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland area, and more broadly to most of the region along the Lower Peninsula's Lake Michigan shoreline, but there is no official definition.
Patricia A. Stryker is an American billionaire businessperson, philanthropist, and political activist. Stryker is the granddaughter of Homer Stryker, founder of Stryker Corporation, a medical technology company.
Richard Marvin DeVos Jr. is an American businessman, author, and former politician. The son of Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, he was CEO of the multi-level marketing company from 1993 to 2002. In 2006, DeVos ran for Governor of Michigan but lost to the then-incumbent Democrat Jennifer Granholm. In 2012, Forbes magazine listed his father as the No. 351 richest person in the world, with a net worth of approximately US$5.4 billion. DeVos is the husband of Betsy DeVos, the former United States Secretary of Education in the Trump administration.
Alida Rockefeller Messinger is an American philanthropist who is an heir to the Rockefeller family fortune.
The Democracy Alliance is a network of progressive megadonors who coordinate their political donations to groups that the Alliance has endorsed. Since its founding in 2005, the Democracy Alliance has given more than $1 billion to liberal organizations and political campaigns. According to The New York Times, the group "channels money from megadonors, whom the group keeps anonymous, to organizations it believes will advance a progressive agenda." It has been described by Politico as "the country's most powerful liberal donor club".
Susie Tompkins Buell is an American entrepreneur, businesswoman and a donor to progressive causes. Tompkins Buell co-founded the Esprit clothing and The North Face brand with her first husband, Doug Tompkins whom she met when she picked him up while he was hitchhiking. She is also noted for her close friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton and her status as a Democratic Party mega-donor.
Gail Furman was an American psychologist and political donor. Furman was president of the Furman Foundation, Inc. The foundation is a major donor to the Tides Center and the Media Matters for America, a left-leaning center for journalism founded by author David Brock.
Joan Luedders Wolfe was an environmental activist who founded the West Michigan Environmental Action Council in 1968. She has been described as "one of the mothers of the modern environmental movement", often acting on a national or global level to achieve local change.
The politics of Michigan, a competitive state that leans Democratic in presidential elections, are divided. Until 2016, Michigan was considered part of the Democrats' "Blue Wall." Governors since the 1970s have alternated between the two parties, and statewide offices including attorney general, secretary of state, and senator have been held by members of both parties in varying proportions, though the state currently is represented by two Democratic U.S. Senators and Democrats hold every statewide office. The Democratic Party has the minimum majority of two seats in both the Senate and the House of Representatives in the Michigan Legislature. The state's congressional delegation is commonly split, with one party or the other typically holding a narrow majority, and Democrats currently have a 7-6 majority.
Michael McCoy is an American industrial designer and educator who has made significant contributions to American design and design education in the latter half of the 20th century. McCoy is best known as the co-chair of the graduate program in Design at Cranbrook Academy of Art where he and spouse Katherine McCoy pioneered semantic approaches to design.
Drummond MacGavin Pike is an American philanthropist and progressive political activist. He founded the Tides Foundation in 1976 and served as its president until 2010. He currently serves as a principal at Equilibrium Capital Group. Pike helped pioneer the advent of donor-advised funds in philanthropy.
Grand Rapids is a city in and county seat of Kent County, Michigan, United States. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 198,893, making it the second-most populous city in Michigan, after Detroit. Grand Rapids is the central city of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area, which has a population of 1,162,950 and a combined statistical area population of 1,502,552.
Formed in the fall of 2006 by Becky Bond, Michael Kieschnick and James Rucker, the Secretary of State Project was an American non-profit, progressive or liberal 527 political action committee focused on electing reform-minded progressive Secretaries of State in battleground states, who typically oversee the election process. They hoped to prevent a repeat of Florida 2000, where the projects backers claimed that a Republican Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, took a partisan role in helping to determine the 2000 presidential election results. The Project was funded by George Soros and members of the Democracy Alliance including Gail Furman, John R. Hunting; Paul Rudd; Pat Stryker; Nicholas Hanauer; Rob Stein; Drummond Pike; Robert Bowditch; Scott Wallace; Susie Tompkins Buell; Albert Dwoskin; and Rob McKay.
Eva McCall Hamilton was an American politician from the state of Michigan. A Republican, she was Michigan's first woman to be elected to the Michigan Legislature and served as a State Senator from 1921 to 1922. Hamilton was a teacher from Grand Rapids.
James Patrick Hackett is an American businessman. He was the president and chief executive officer of Ford Motor Company from May 2017 to October 2020.
