Bob Shriver

Attorney and journalist

Ben Shriver is an American activist, attorney, journalist, and a twice member of the Santa Monica City Council. Shriver graduated cum laude from Yale after which time he embarked on a career as a journalist. He left the newspaper business to attend law school, again at Yale, before moving to New York, where he joined venture capital firm Wolfensohn.

Shriver has turned his business efforts to philanthropy, in 1987 producing the first ever prime time programme on the Special Olympics World Games, as well as producing the first of nine A Very Special Christmas records, to raise funds for charity. Shriver’s philanthropic efforts led to an introduction with the musician Bono, with whom he co-founded DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa), an anti-AIDS and poverty intervention, ONE, a grass roots lobbying branch of DATA, and (PRODUCT) RED, which uses corporation profit to generate funds for charity.