Peter B. Lewis

Peter B. Lewis (born November 11, 1933) is the Cleveland, Ohio-area based chairman of Progressive Insurance Companies. Lewis currently resides in Coconut Grove, Florida.

Biography

Lewis attended Cleveland Heights High School and then graduated from Princeton University in 1955.

Business

In 1965 Lewis became Progressive's chief executive officer after joining as an underwriting trainee in 1955. (His father, Joe Lewis, who died in 1955, co-founded Progressive with Jack Green in 1937.) In the 1960s Progressive had 100 employees and $6 million in revenues. As of 2005, Progressive had grown to 27,000 employees with sales of $13.4 billion and become the third largest auto insurance company in the United States. In 2000 Lewis retired as CEO of Progressive, though he remains as Chairman of the Board.

Philanthropy and political contributions

With an estimated net worth in excess of a billion dollars,^{[citation needed]} Lewis frequently donates money to charities and political groups. He is a patron of the arts and supports many artistic pursuits. Lewis's personal and corporate contemporary art collection is well known—the corporate collection is displayed at Progressive Insurance offices. Lewis has made donations to:

• Princeton University (A Gehry designed science library, $60 million; the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, $55 million; arts initiative, $101 million. Total $233 million to date.)
• Case Western Reserve University (The Weatherhead School of Management Peter B. Lewis Building, another Gehry design, $36.9 million, out of $61.7 total building cost)
• Marijuana Policy Project (Donated $3,000,000 to MPP in 2007.)
• The Guggenheim Museum ($50 million)
• America Coming Together and MoveOn.org (with George Soros matching his $10 and $2.5 million, respectively)
• American Civil Liberties Union $15m
• The Democratic Party
• Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies-sponsored MDMA/PTSD Research in the US, Switzerland and Israel $750,000 [www.maps.org]
• Menorah Park (Peter B. Lewis Aquatic & Therapy Center)
• Traction
• Support of California's Proposition 19 also known as the Regulate, Control & Tax Cannabis Act (Donation of $159,005 on 10/15/2010)

Lewis is a trustee of Princeton University, former chairman of the board of directors at the Guggenheim Museum (resigned January 19, 2005), and serves on the board of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Although Lewis often gives substantial gifts to artistic and educational organizations, he also has a reputation for — often forcefully — insisting that such organizations be financially accountable and financially sound; as of late 2004, Lewis has said he will no longer give to Case or Cleveland's University Circle neighborhood due to poor leadership and management.^{[citation needed]} He has said that those funds might instead be diverted to Cleveland State University.

Lewis is an advocate of taxing and regulating the use and sale of marijuana and is one of the main financial backers of the recent, partially successful, campaign to legalize the use of marijuana for medical use in the U.S. In January 2000, Mr. Lewis was arrested and charged in New Zealand for possession of marijuana. Lewis pleaded guilty to three charges and paid a substantial fine, though under New Zealand law he was not required to serve time in jail or prison. According to his lawyer, Marie Dyhrberg, Lewis used the marijuana on the advice of his doctor for pain relief after the partial amputation of his leg in 1998.

References

• "FPO chief explains tragic ending" by Daniel Chang and Gail Meadows, The Miami Herald, May 25, 2003
• "Who owns Cleveland?" by Thomas Kelly, The Cleveland Free Times, March 10, 2004