Bradley D. Belt

Bradley D. Belt is Vice Chairman of Orchard Global Capital Group, a $7B global alternatives asset manager focused on private credit strategies.  Orchard has offices in London, Houston, Toronto, Singapore, and New York and a global investor base of leading sovereign wealth funds, public and private pension plans, and foundations and endowments.

 

Belt previously was Chairman and founder of Palisades Capital Advisors, a boutique restructuring advisory firm he established in partnership with Reservoir Capital Management.  He remains Chairman of Palisades Capital Management, a private investment firm.   

 

Belt also served as the Senior Managing Director of the Milken Institute, a leading nonpartisan economic policy research organization.  He was responsible for heading the Institute’s expansion in Washington, DC, broadening and diversifying the Institute’s donor base, expanding engagement with Congress, the Administration and federal regulatory agencies, and overseeing creation of the Institute’s Center on Financial Markets.  

 

Belt served in the Administration of President George W. Bush as the Executive Director and CEO of the PBGC, a federally chartered corporation that insures and regulates defined benefit plans sponsored by private sector employers.  Belt was responsible for the Corporation’s operations, including management of a $60B investment fund, administering an insurance program covering 40 million Americans in nearly 30,000 defined benefit plans with $2 trillion of risk exposure, leading a workforce of more than 2,000 federal and contract employees, and providing benefit payments of more than $4 billion annually to more than half a million retirees.

Under his leadership, PBGC restructured its operations, adopted a new liability-driven investment policy, implemented performance-based human capital management strategies, established new risk management and internal control systems, and negotiated the largest and most complex financial settlements in the Corporation’s 30-year history.  Belt also helped shape and communicate Administration policy on pension and retirement security issues, including the Pension Protection Act.

Belt has extensive executive management, operations, finance, and policy experience in the private, public, and non-profit sectors.  His previous government service includes senior staff positions with the Securities Exchange Commission and United States Senate, including as counsel to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.  In the private sector, he has been an executive of a financial services and technology company and managing director of merchant banking and public affairs strategy firms.  He also served as senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a leading international policy institute.

Mr. Belt was named by SmartMoney as one of its “Power 30” in finance in 2005 and by Workforce magazine as one of its “10 Most Forward-Thinking Leaders in Workforce Management.”  He serves or has served on the boards of private sector companies and professional and civic organizations, including UNICEF USA, the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation (oversight board for Washington National Cathedral and St. Albans, Cathedral, and Beauvoir schools), Zurich American Life Insurance Company (NY), RMIT, Inc., Wood Creek Capital Management and Shenkman Capital Management.  Industry affiliations include serving on the North American Advisory Committee of the Standards Board for Alternative Investments and the Markets Advisory Council of the Council of Institutional Investors. Belt was also appointed by President George W. Bush to the Social Security Advisory Board. 

 

An Eisenhower Fellow, Mr. Belt completed an executive management program at Harvard University, received his law degree from Georgetown University, and obtained his undergraduate degree in business administration from the University of Nebraska (with high honors).  He is a member of the New York, District of Columbia, and U.S. Supreme Court ba