Board of Trustees Events

Major General (Ret.) James A. “Spider” Marks is Head of Geopolitical Strategy and Academy Securities’ Senior Advisory Board Member.

General Marks is the Founder and President of The Marks Collaborative, an advisory for corporate leader development, education and training and has led entrepreneurial efforts in global primary research and national security. He served over 30 years in the Army holding every command position from infantry platoon leader to commanding general and was the senior intelligence officer in the LA Riots, the Balkans, Korea, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He culminated his career as the Commanding General of the US Army Intelligence Center and School at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.

He has been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf cluster, Bronze Star, and multiple combat, expeditionary and service ribbons. General Marks is a Master parachutist, authorized to wear Korean and Canadian Airborne wings, Air Assault qualified, and Honor Graduate of the US Army Ranger School. General Marks is a national security contributor to CNN and member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.

Kevin M. Lewis serves as Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Head of Tubular Solutions. In this role, Mr. Lewis leads all aspects of finance, including financial planning and analysis (FP&A), corporate accounting, tax, treasury, and pension investments, as well as real estate and sales & operations planning. He also oversees the Tubular Solutions business. He is a member of the senior leadership team, reporting to President and CEO David B. Burritt.

Previously, Mr. Lewis served as Vice President of Finance & Strategy. As part of this role, he was responsible for Corporate Strategy, further strengthening the alignment of Company’s strategy with the Finance organization. Mr. Lewis also led the Transition Execution Office and North American Flat-rolled and Tubular FP&A.

Mr. Lewis joined U. S. Steel in 2008 as a Management Associate in FP&A. During his tenure, he took on roles of increasing responsibility across the finance organization, including FP&A, strategy and investor relations.

Mr. Lewis earned his bachelor’s degree from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he majored in finance and sports marketing. He also earned his Master of Business Administration from Duquesne University. Mr. Lewis is a member of Duquesne University’s Palumbo-Donahue School of Business Investment Strategy Advisory Council.

Stephen Gold has served as President and CEO of Manufacturers Alliance since March 2011. Over the past three decades, he has represented U.S. manufacturers in a variety of senior-level roles in nonprofit membership organizations, including in government relations, communications, and operations. Mr. Gold is presently a contributing columnist for IndustryWeek, and has served as an occasional guest columnist for The Washington Times. He regularly writes on topics such as the geopolitical challenges, automation and technology advances, workforce and demographic challenges, and public policy.

Prior to his current position as the Alliance’s President, he held the position as Senior Vice President of Operations for the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) from 2006 - 2011, where he provided management oversight of the trade association's 50 business units, member recruitment and retention, international operations, business development, and meeting planning. While at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) in the early 2000s, Mr. Gold helped launch NAM’s Campaign for the Future of U.S. Manufacturing and served as executive director of the Coalition for the Future of U.S. Manufacturing. He specialized in regulatory law in the 1990s, working at a D.C.-based firm in the consumer product safety practice group and in energy and environmental issues in the government relations practice group.

He has served on the Board of Directors of NAM’s Council of Manufacturing Associations, on the Board of Trustees of The Manufacturing Institute, and on the Alumni Board of the George Mason University School of Law, including a stint as president. Presently he serves as treasurer on the Board of Directors of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (IMCW).

Mr. Gold received a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law (cum laude), an M.A. in history from George Washington University, and a B.S. in history from Arizona State University (magna cum laude). 

Chris Cillizza spent four years as an editor at large at CNN and regularly appeared as a political analyst on the network’s airwaves. Prior to CNN, Cillizza worked for a decade at The Washington Post, where he founded The Fix political blog and built a reputation as the authority on fast, incisive analysis of the day's events. A frequent TV guest across networks, Cillizza was an MSNBC political contributor for eight years. Prior to The Washington Post, Cillizza reported on campaign politics for Roll Call, where he served as their White House Correspondent. He also previously reported for The Cook Political Report, where he covered gubernatorial and House races. A graduate of Georgetown University, he lives in Virginia with his wife and two sons and is a diehard Hoyas basketball fan.

Stephen I. Vladeck is a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and is a nationally recognized expert on the federal courts; the Supreme Court; national security law; and military justice.

Vladeck is author of the New York Times bestselling book, “The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic,” which won the 2023 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the 2024 ABA Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts. Vladeck is also a highly regarded appellate advocate, having argued three cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and over a dozen before various lower federal civilian and military courts. He has received numerous awards for his influential and widely cited legal scholarship, his prolific popular writing, his teaching, and his service to the legal profession—including the 2024 University of Texas President’s Research Impact Award and his selection by the Order of the Coif to serve as its Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2025.

Vladeck is CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and editor and author of “One First,” a popular weekly newsletter about the Supreme Court. Together with Bobby Chesney, Vladeck co-hosts the popular and award-winning “National Security Law Podcast.” He is also a co-author of Aspen Publishers’ leading national security law and counterterrorism law casebooks. And he is a member of the Board of Trustees of EarthJustice—the nation’s premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.

Vladeck graduated from Yale Law School in 2004—where he was executive editor of the Yale Law Journal and won the Harlan Fiske Stone Prize for outstanding moot court oralist and shared the Potter Stewart Prize for best moot court team performance. After law school, he clerked for the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Honorable Rosemary Barkett on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He earned a B.A. summa cum laude with Highest Distinction in History and Mathematics from Amherst College in 2001—where he wrote his senior thesis on “Leipzig’s Shadow: The War Crimes Trials of the First World War and Their Implications from Nuremberg to the Present.”