Robert D. Haas

He is the chairman emeritus, former President of Levi Strauss & Co. and the great-great-grandnephew of the company's founder, Levi Strauss. As CEO, Haas was instrumental in leading the company through a business turnaround that resulted in more than a decade of rapid sales growth and profit expansion. Under Haas' leadership in the early 1980's, Levi Strauss & Co. pioneered HIV/AIDS awareness and education policies, widely adopted by other institutions. In 1991, LS&Co. became the first multinational company to develop a comprehensive code of conduct to ensure that workers making its products anywhere in the world would do so in safe and healthy working conditions and be treated with dignity and respect. Haas has also received national recognition for his leadership in corporate philanthropy and for launching Project Change, a grass-roots program designed to combat institutional racism. He is currently a treasurer and trustee of the Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and president of the Levi Strauss Foundation. He is a Berkeley Fellow, received the Chancellor's Award and was named Cal's Alumnus of the Year in 2009. Haas also funds the Haas Scholars Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Haas has served as chairman of the Stanford Humanities and Sciences Council and trustee of Mills College and University of the Pacific. He is a member of The Conference Board and Council on Foreign Relations, an honorary trustee of the Brookings Institution, an honorary director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and has served as trustee of the Ford Foundation, as a member of the North American Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission, the California Business Roundtable and the Bay Area Council and was appointed to the Mission Model Cities Corporation and Mission Housing Development Corporation boards.