39 Facts About Whitney Tilson

Whitney Richard Tilson was born on November 1,1966 and is an American former hedge fund manager, author, and Democratic political activist.

Whitney Tilson is a candidate in the 2025 New York City mayoral Democratic primary.

Whitney Tilson was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Thomas and Susan Tilson.

Whitney Tilson's great-grandfather was John Q Tilson, a Republican politician from Connecticut.

John Q Tilson served in the House of Representatives for 22 years, for six years as House Majority Leader, during the Coolidge and Hoover administrations.

Whitney Tilson grew up for a few years in Tanzania and Nicaragua, where his parents served as educators in the Peace Corps.

Whitney Tilson graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts in 1985.

Whitney Tilson spent two years working as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group before business school.

Whitney Tilson followed the approach of investor Warren Buffett, investing in companies selling at a significant discount to intrinsic value, and described himself as a disciple of value investing theorist Benjamin Graham.

Whitney Tilson founded and managed the hedge fund Kase Capital from 1999 to 2017, which in turn managed three value-oriented hedge funds and two mutual funds, as a value investor.

In 2019, Whitney Tilson became an editor at Stansberry Research, an investment newsletter that has more than 100,000 paid subscribers.

Whitney Tilson has authored or co-authored three books, More Mortgage Meltdown: 6 Ways to Profit in These Bad Times with Glenn Tongue, The Art of Value Investing: How the World's Best Investors Beat the Market with John Heins, and The Art of Playing Defense: How to Get Ahead by Not Falling Behind.

Whitney Tilson was a contributing editor to Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T Munger.

Whitney Tilson is a frequent contributor to financial publications, including the Stansberry Investment Advisory newsletter, the Financial Times, Kiplinger's Personal Finance, The Motley Fool, Forbes, TheStreet, and CNBC.

Whitney Tilson had shorted the company's stock after it more than doubled in a year, and paid $5,000 to test three pieces of wood; he said that formaldehyde levels in the wood he tested were two to six times the California Air Resources Board limits.

Whitney Tilson was a founding member of Teach For America, a nonprofit that places college graduates as teachers in severely underprivileged schools.

Whitney Tilson is involved with a number of charities that focus on education reform.

Whitney Tilson served on the board of the Knowledge is Power Program Academy, a charter school in the South Bronx, for two decades, and is a vocal supporter of charter schools.

Whitney Tilson is a co-founder and board member of national political action committee Democrats for Education Reform.

In 2007, Whitney Tilson helped create a $1 million program funded by philanthropists to pay students in 25 public schools and six Roman Catholic private schools in New York City who do well on Advanced Placement exams.

Whitney Tilson approached the Pershing Square Foundation to finance the project, and it agreed to give the project $1 million for its first year.

Whitney Tilson served on the finance committees of Barack Obama and Cory Booker.

Mr Whitney Tilson happened to be one of the rare Wall Street executives who had donated to Ms.

Whitney Tilson is a member of the Patriotic Millionaires, a nonpartisan organization of high net worth Americans who are in favor of the restructuring of the American tax system so that wealthy people pay a greater share of their income in taxes.

Whitney Tilson has served on the board of the Fistula Foundation.

Whitney Tilson said he hoped to have a small part in righting what he called a "miscarriage of justice".

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, Whitney Tilson volunteered his time and $7,000 to help build a 68-bed field hospital in Central Park, to treat overflow coronavirus patients from Mount Sinai Hospital.

Whitney Tilson set up tents and beds, donated shovels and sleds, led volunteering efforts, and bought and delivered food for the group's doctors and nurses.

Whitney Tilson supported their effort despite being strongly opposed to the group's views and Graham's statements decrying both gay marriage and legal abortion, finding their positions "abhorrent", and he said he did not intend his volunteer work and donation to be taken as an endorsement of the group or of Graham.

Whitney Tilson has visited Ukraine four times since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Whitney Tilson has raised more than $18 million for humanitarian supplies, medical care, ambulances, generators, and battery packs,.

In November 2024, Whitney Tilson announced his entry into the June 2025 Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City in the 2025 mayoral election.

Whitney Tilson promised to cut New York City violent crime, reduce municipal spending, address the high cost of living, and improve New York City public schools.

Whitney Tilson called "defund the police" the "three dumbest words of all time".

Whitney Tilson should be sleeping in a jail cell, not hiding in a taxpayer-funded mansion on the Upper East Side.

Whitney Tilson sold out New York to kiss Trump's ass so he could avoid the consequences of his actions.

Whitney Tilson is a long-time congregant of the Central Synagogue in Manhattan; he is not Jewish, though his wife and daughters are.

Whitney Tilson competes in obstacle course racing, participating in seven 24-hour World's Toughest Mudder races.

Whitney Tilson has won the over-50 age category twice, and was the first to set the age group mark of 75 miles in 2016.