David Blitzstein has spent the past 41 years as an advocate for working people and Organized Labor specializing in negotiating and administering pension and health insurance benefits.

Mr. Blitzstein was employed by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) from 1984-1988, and was engaged as a professional trustee on behalf of the UMWA Construction Pension and Retiree Heath Funds between 1990 -1999. Mr. Blitzstein was employed by the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) as a research economist from 1978-1983, and again in 1990, retiring in December 2013. Between 1990-2006, Mr. Blitzstein served as the UFCW’s first Director of the Negotiated Benefits Department, building a staff that supported and provided technical assistance to 600 local unions in collective bargaining and 150 multiemployer plans. During his tenure at the UFCW, Mr. Blitzstein advised three International Union Presidents on both retirement and health insurance public policy. In 2006, coincident with the enactment of the Pension Protection Act (PPA), Mr. Blitzstein was designated the UFCW’s Special Assistant for Multiemployer Plans and appointed a trustee of six of the UFCW’s largest multiemployer pension plans, where he offered  regulatory, funding and investment advice to boards of trustees.

During his career, Mr. Blitzstein has been a frequent speaker at public policy forums on retirement and health care. In addition to his work at the UFCW, Mr. Blitzstein served on the steering committee of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans (NCCMP) from 1990-2013. Mr. Blitzstein served as a director of the Pension Research Council of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania from 1997 through 2019. Mr. Blitzstein was appointed in 2008 by the Governor of Maryland to be a trustee of the Maryland State Retirement System and is currently serving his second term. President Obama appointed Mr. Blitzstein to the Advisory Committee of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in 2011, which he served until November 2014. In January 2013 Mr. Blitzstein was elected to the Board of Directors of CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, a non-profit health insurance company.

Mr. Blitzstein earned a B.A. with honors in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, and a M.S. in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1978.  In December 2014, Mr. Blitzstein completed and received a certificate for the Board Effectiveness Program for Pension and Other Long-Horizon Investment Institutions from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and the Rotman International Centre for Pension Management.

In November 2013, Mr. Blitzstein was named by Institutional Investor to its “Pension Forty” most influential leaders list.  Mr. Blitzstein was also recipient of the 2013 CORPaTH International Pension Alliance Career Achievement Award. In 2014, the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans (NCCMP) awarded Mr. Blitzstein with its 14^th Annual John. L, Lewis Award.