Lee Rosenberg
President of AIPAC (since 2010)
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(AIPAC)
Chicago entrepreneur Lee "Rosy" Rosenberg was one of President Barack Obama's staunchest Jewish allies during his 2008 presidential campaign. He advised the president on foreign policy in the Middle East and Israel and delivered speeches to Jewish groups around the country.
A venture capitalist and jazz-music industry producer, Rosenberg was one of Obama's earliest political backers. Nonetheless, since assuming the leadership of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March 2010, Rosenberg has had to deal with rocky relations between the Obama administration and Israel.
Rosenberg is a powerful Chicago entrepreneur and venture capitalist who has focused on media and entertainment. He was a founding shareholder and director of New York-based GRP Records, a company that became one of the country's largest contemporary jazz labels.
In 1997, he co-founded Kettle Partners, a venture-capital fund that developed projects like MusicNow, which specializes in creating new ways to legally download music, and Egreetings Network, the first online greeting card company to incorporate music from top artists. He remains a managing director at the firm.
At its annual May 2011 policy conference, Rosenberg warned supporters that the tea-party wave that swept the November 2010 elections meant that friends in high places were going to be harder to come by for AIPAC.
"Capitol Hill is no longer a place of entrenched incumbency," Rosenberg said at the May 2011 annual AIPAC policy conference. "Knowledge and institutional memory -- gone! Continuity -- gone! Relationships -- gone!"
Rosenberg has ties to several of Obama's Chicago associates in the Jewish community including Lester Crowne, a local billionaire whose son, Jim, was Obama's 2008 Illinois finance chairman; Penny Pritzker, the campaign's national finance chairwoman; and Abner Mikva, a former congressman and federal judge and Obama mentor.
- "Obama Delivers Remarks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Annual Conference," The Washington Post, June 4, 2008
- "Senator Barack Obama Speaks in Washington D.C. at AIPAC Conference," CNN, June 4, 2008.
- http://www.lrsmedia.net/about?id=0003
- Kreiger, Hilary, "Mr. Obama's neighborhood," Jerusalem Post, Oct. 24, 2008
- Kreiger, Hilary, "Mr. Obama's neighborhood," Jerusalem Post, Oct. 24, 2008.
- Kampeas, Ron, JTA, At AIPAC, effort to shift focus back to agenda: Iran, foreign aid, Capitol Hill relationships, May 23, 2011
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