William J. Arnone

Based in New York, Bill Arnone recently retired from a 15-year career as a Partner with Ernst & Young LLP. He was responsible for the strategic positioning, design, management and marketing of retirement and financial education and counseling in employer-sponsored programs. He has over 25 years of experience in retirement income policy and planning, as well as in assisting large organizations in the realignment of their defined benefit, defined contribution and hybrid plans with their business imperatives and human resources objectives.

Prior to joining Ernst & Young as a Partner, he was Principal, Benefit Consultant and National Director of Financial & Retirement Planning Services for Buck Consultants, Inc.

Mr. Arnone joined Buck in 1981 after serving as Director, Senior Security Services, for the New York City Department for the Aging. He also served as Consultant on Employment of Older Workers for the Florence V. Burden Foundation in New York. He previously was Executive Director of Helping Aged Needing Direction in the Bronx.

Mr. Arnone has published numerous articles on retirement, particularly focusing on Social Security and Medicare. He is co-author of Ernst & Young’s Retirement Planning Guide (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2001). He is an Associate Editor of The Columbia Retirement Handbook (Columbia University Press, 1994). He has extensive experience in organizational work with the aging, including the New York State Delegations to the 1981 and 1995 White House Conferences on Aging. He was also appointed as a delegate to the 2002 National Summit on Retirement Savings.

Mr. Arnone has served on the Board of Trustees of the Employee Benefit Research Institute and as Chair of EBRI’s Research Committee. He is also a Founding Member of the National Academy of Social Insurance and served on the Academy's Board of Directors from 1986 to 1994. He co-chaired the Academy’s 2010 conference, “Beyond The Bad Economy,” which attracted several hundred public policy specialists and thought leaders from government, academia, business, labor, media, and not-for-profit organizations.

He has also served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Buckley Country Day School, Long Island, New York.

Bill graduated from Fordham College with a B.A. in political science in 1970. He served on the staff of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s New York Senate Office and on his 1968 Presidential campaign. He received a J.D. from New York University Law School in 1973. Mr. Arnone was selected as one of the first Charles H. Revson Fellows on the Future of New York City by the Columbia University School of Business for 1979-1980.

He is also a long-time political strategist. His focus is on retirement security issues and older voter strategy. He has served as an informal adviser to many Democratic national, state, and local campaigns, including most recently the Presidential campaigns of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Barack Obama.

Most recently, Bill was one of fourteen candidates considered by the bipartisan bicameral Selection Commission for the position of Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the independent watchdog of Congress.