Salisbury retiring as head of EBRI

It is hard to imagine the Employee Benefit Research Institute without Dallas Salisbury.

Mr. Salisbury said earlier this month that he will retire at the end of the year from the organization he helped launch in 1978, and where he was the first and only president and CEO. He then will assume the title of president emeritus.

In the meantime, an executive committee of EBRI's board of directors is narrowing its search for his replacement, and expects to announce a decision by July 1.

While speculation about such high-profile changes is a Washington pastime, EBRI's unique role as a trusted, neutral source of rigorous benefits research has many observers stumped about an acceptable successor.

One candidate who fits that bill is EBRI Research Director Jack VanDerhei. Other possible candidates suggested include longtime Senate aide Michael Kreps. Another is Leslie Kramerich, acting policy chief at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., who has served as an assistant secretary of Labor and worked at Mercer LLC.

Another possibility offered is J. Mark Iwry, deputy assistant secretary for retirement and health policy at the Treasury Department, highly regarded for his scholarly approach to benefit issues.

When asked if they were interested in the position, most declined to comment.

Still others speculate Mr. Salisbury's successor will come from an academic background. Unlike many Washington institutions that lobby for a specific point of view, an organization “that educates the nation” is a different matter, said Joshua Gotbaum, former director of the PBGC and now a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Considering that the head of EBRI has to have a broad understanding of benefits, a neutral position and a good public policy perspective, “maybe they should have a committee,” said Thomas Woodruff, director of health-care policy and benefit services in Connecticut's Office of the Comptroller. Mr. Woodruff, who directed a pension commission under President Jimmy Carter, often found himself in point/counterpoint discussions with Mr. Salisbury at the time. He continues to use EBRI research to show business and medical school students at the University of Connecticut how health economics and pension risk management work.

“It has to be someone as smart as Dallas,” said Ian Lanoff, a principal with Groom Law Group in Washington, the first administrator of what is now the Employee Benefits Security Administration at the Department of Labor. “It's really a tribute to him that he was able to build that out of nothing,” said Mr. Lanoff, who credits Mr. Salisbury with helping him navigate the bureaucracy.

Board Chairwoman Pamela French said in a statement that Mr. Salisbury, a “fixture in Washington,” will be hard to replace, but an orderly transition will “ensure that EBRI's exceptionally valuable research will continue unaffected in the future.” Ms. French, vice president for compensation and benefits at Boeing Co., Chicago, was not available to comment further.

Continuity is a big part of his legacy, said American Benefits Council President James Klein. “A real testament to what he has built is that they will continue to thrive,” Mr. Klein said.

A large reason for that is a single-minded determination to provide good data and research, not opinions or positions on benefit design, said Mr. Salisbury. “To me, the thing that is most differentiating from many organizations and one of the reasons I stayed, is that the organization has always stayed very focused on its core mission and core purposes,” he said.

EBRI's 13 founding members included The Segal Co., Towers Perrin and the Wyatt Co., the latter two now part of Towers Watson & Co. Today, EBRI has 148 members, and has only lost four over its insistence on neutrality, he said.

“We're not in the business of judging,” said Mr. Salisbury. “That has always been the bottom-line position. There are many, many opportunities to support advocacy. One of the things that has allowed EBRI to prosper over the years is essentially there are almost no organizations that do what we do, and even come close in employee benefits.”

At first, the original idea was to work on all employee benefit issues, but it wasn't long before retirement loomed larger than others. Since then, health care has played a bigger role, particularly in recent years.

“The thing that has changed probably most dramatically is as a result of technology and the power of the Internet,” said Mr. Salisbury. With government sources like the Census Bureau and the PBGC, “the amount of data you can get off these websites is extraordinary,” he said. That has allowed EBRI to create a “one-of-a kind” database as well, he said.

The need to educate about retirement readiness hasn't changed either, he said. “There's still a huge continued public misunderstanding. If you don't study history you're doomed to repeat it. You sometimes need to shock people,” he said.

Mr. Salisbury insists he is not retiring from EBRI, and is already thinking about projects that will allow him to do more writing and analysis. They might include “some historical pieces on what has seemed to have happened as opposed to some of the conventional wisdom,” and “perhaps a look at the pre- and post-ERISA environment - what has actually happened and what the implications are,” he said.

The Washington insider grew up in the West Coast Washington. Mr. Salisbury is an Everett native who earned a business degree at the University of Washington, with specialties in finance and accounting. While there, he served as a student body officer and was the first student to sit on the board of regents. Graduate school in public administration at Syracuse University introduced him to his future wife. After a stint at the Department of Justice, he went to the Labor Department and then to the PBGC, where he was a special assistant to the director and then deputy director for public affairs and communication, before joining EBRI. n