Whitney Richard Tilson (born November 1, 1966) is an American former hedge fund manager, and a philanthropist, author, and Democratic political activist.
[1] Tilson's parents had met when they were in the Peace Corps, teaching in the Philippines, and married three months later; as of 2015 they lived in Kenya, as did his sister Dana.
[5] At age 6, he participated in the Stanford marshmallow experiment, a psychological study that examined delayed gratification among children.
[9] BCG agreed to defer his start date for half a year, so that he could help launch Teach for America.
[14][7][15] As of February 2004, his hedge fund had returned 68% (53% after fees) since its start on January 1, 1999, compared with a 3% loss for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index.
[14] Tilson has authored or co-authored three books, More Mortgage Meltdown: 6 Ways to Profit in These Bad Times (2009) with Glenn Tongue, The Art of Value Investing: How the World's Best Investors Beat the Market (2013) with John Heins, and The Art of Playing Defense: How to Get Ahead by Not Falling Behind (2021).
[24] The broadcast accused the company of selling an unsafe type of Chinese-made laminate flooring that contained dangerous levels of the carcinogen formaldehyde which exceeded emissions standards.
[29] Tilson was critical of Harvard's response to antisemitism on campus in the wake of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war that began with the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
[30] Tilson was a founding member of Teach For America, a nonprofit that places college graduates as teachers in severely underprivileged schools.
[38][39] In 2016, he was derisively criticized by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren in a Facebook post as a "hedge fund billionaire... thrilled by Donald Trump's economic team of Wall Street insiders".
[44] He wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in 2012: "people like me — who aren’t suffering at all in these tough economic times, who are in many cases doing the best we’ve ever done and who can easily afford to pay more in taxes with no impact on our lifestyle — should be the first to step up and make a small sacrifice.
[32] In 2005, after 17-year-old Genarlow Wilson engaged in oral sex with a consenting 15-year-old girl, he was convicted in Georgia of aggravated child molestation, and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
[46][47] At the time, Georgia statutory provisions for similarity in age that allowed underage consent to be taken into account only applied to vaginal sex.
[31] In October 2007, the Georgia State Supreme Court ruled that Wilson's sentence was cruel and unusual, and ordered him released.
[51] In September 2011, Tilson raised $200,000 for charities working to address the famine, violence, and mass rape in Somalia during the Somali Civil War.
[53][54] He set up tents and beds, donated shovels and sleds, led volunteering efforts, and bought and delivered food for the group's doctors and nurses.
[53][54] The field hospital was an initiative of Samaritan's Purse, an evangelical Christian humanitarian aid organization led by Rev.
He sold out New York to kiss Trump's ass so he could avoid the consequences of his actions.”[61] Tilson lives in Manhattan with his wife Susan Dana, née Blackman, whom he married in 1993, and with whom he has three adult daughters.