Harold Oscar Levy (December 14, 1952 – November 27, 2018) was an American lawyer and philanthropist who last served as the executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.

His father, a former textile merchant in Trier, Germany, owned a hardware store on East 59th Street, and the family lived in the Washington Heights neighborhood.

[2] During the first period of his career, Levy worked on Wall Street providing legal advice to Citigroup, Inc. and its predecessors, Traveler's Group, Inc., Salomon, Inc. and Philipp Brothers, Inc.[3] He was the associate general counsel and handled special assignments, including serving as Citigroup's director of global compliance, Salomon Brothers' senior litigation counsel, and serving as liaison to community groups, including Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rainbow / Push Wall Street Project.

Chancellor Ramon Cortines appointed Levy chair of the New York City Commission on School Facilities and Maintenance Reform.

The commission concluded the schools needed billions in new investment,[4] drawing Levy further into the struggle to improve education in New York City.

The New York City Board of Education voted 4 to 3 to make Levy interim chancellor, a move opposed by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani.

However, Levy's business-like approach eventually engendered a mutual respect with Giuliani and other skeptics, and he was unanimously voted permanent chancellor after five months on the job.

He became a member of the senior management team of Kaplan, Inc., at a time that it was owned by The Washington Post, and subsequently joined its Higher Education Division, which included over 70 for-profit campuses and an online university with over 60,000 students.

[12] Levy currently serves on several corporate and philanthropic boards, including Cambium Learning Group,[13] MetSchools,[14] and the American College of Greece.

"[17] In August 2014, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation announced that Levy had been named executive director effective September 1.

Leading Cooke Foundation efforts to bring about equal opportunity in college admissions for outstanding low-income students across the United States, Levy traveled around the nation and appeared in the media to discuss unjustified barriers that keep many academically qualified low-income students out of top colleges and universities.

Hannah is a sculptor in New York City who graduated from Cornell and the Staedelschule fine arts academy, having held a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship, in Frankfurt, Germany.