JOHN T. WALTON CSF Co-Founder In Memoriam, 1946-2005 John Walton was a business investor and active in education reform and school choice.  More than 96,000 low-income children have benefitted from the Children's Scholarship Fund which John co-founded and supported through the Walton Family Foundation, which invests in programs that empower parents to choose the best education for their children.  He was also an active board member and supporter of Alliance for School Choice, a national school choice advocacy group, as well as California Charter School Alliance, EdVoice, and Jackson Hole-based Public Education Coalition. THEODORE J. FORSTMANN Chairman Co-Founder Children's Scholarship Fund Ted Forstmann is senior partner of Forstmann Little & Co., a private investment firm, and he is a champion of expanding educational and economic opportunities. Since its founding in 1978, Forstmann Little has made 25 acquisitions and significant equity investments, returning billions of dollars to its investors. The firm’s best-known investments include Gulfstream Aerospace, General Instrument and Ziff-Davis Publishing. Forstmann serves as chairman of Gulfstream and serves on the board of directors of Community Health Systems, Yankee Candle and McLeodUSA. The firm currently has nearly $3 billion in committed capital for future investments. Though Forstmann is recognized as a giant in the investment industry, he also has long been committed to numerous philanthropic causes, particularly those helping children. His involvement in education began more than 20 years ago when he began mentoring a ten-year-old boy in a Big Brothers program and became an active board member of New York's Inner City Scholarship Fund. In 1997, as chairman of the Washington Scholarship Fund (WSF), Forstmann funded 1,000 scholarships to provide low-income families in the District of Columbia with the opportunity to choose their children’s schools. The tremendous response to the WSF inspired Mr. Forstmann to join John Walton of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. in pledging $100 million of their own money to launch the Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF), to help children of low-income families nationwide to gain access to the private and parochial schools of their choice. As a director of the International Rescue Committee, Forstmann has made several trips to Bosnia where he established a medical program for war-injured children. As a major contributor and the only non-South African trustee of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, Forstmann has worked to relieve the plight of South African street children by helping to provide education, shelter and medical care.  Forstmann is the guardian of two young boys, Everest and Siya, who have become a significant part of his life. Here in the U.S., Forstmann has been a contributor to the Benedict-Forstmann Silver Lining Ranch, a camp started by tennis pro Andrea Jaeger for terminally ill children, and Paul Newman's Boggy Creek Gang Camp in Florida for children with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. To raise funds for these and other children’s charities, Forstmann and two of his brothers established the Huggy Bear Invitational Tennis Tournament in 1984, a pro-am event that raises more than $1 million annually for several different children’s charities. A graduate of Yale University and the Columbia School of Law, Forstmann has received honorary doctorate degrees in jurisprudence from Siena College and Pepperdine University and received an honorary doctorate degree in Education Leadership from Seton Hall University.