| Gail Furman | |
| Birth Name: | Gail Gorman |
| Birth Date: | 1946 |
| Birth Place: | Queens, New York, U.S. |
| Death Date: | April 17, 2019 |
| Alma Mater: | University of Michigan (BA) New York University (PhD) |
| Spouse: | Jay Furman (divorced) |
| Children: | Jason Furman Jesse Furman |
Gail Furman (1946 – 2019) was an American psychologist and political donor. Furman was president of the Furman Foundation, Inc. The foundation is a major donor to the Tides Center and the Media Matters for America, a left-leaning center for journalism founded by author David Brock.[1] [2]
Furman was born in 1946 to a Jewish family in Queens, New York, the daughter of Martha and David Gorman.[3] [4] Her mother was a performer who used the stage name Marny Frances. She graduated from the University of Michigan and held a PhD in psychology from New York University.[5] [6]
Furman worked as a psychologist at the Fieldston School and the Dalton School from 1973 until 1990.[7]
In December 2003, Furman attended a gathering in New York City organized by Erica Payne in order to watch a screening of Democracy Alliance founder Rob Stein's PowerPoint presentation, The Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix. After the presentation, Furman agreed in front of the group to donate more than $25,000 to fund Stein to conduct a research project to determine "what kind of groups the Left needed to fund."[8]
At the second meeting of the Democracy Alliance in October 2005, Furman "demanded to know why the alliance wasn't creating a 'nerve center' that could book progressives on TV news shows."[9]
Furman along with George Soros and other Democracy Alliance members John R. Hunting; Paul Rudd (co-founder of Adaptive Analytics); Pat Stryker; Nicholas Hanauer; ex-Clinton administration official Rob Stein; Drummond Pike; real estate developer Robert Bowditch; Pioneer Hybrid International-heir and congressional candidate Scott Wallace; Susie Tompkins Buell; real estate developer Albert Dwoskin; and Taco Bell-heir Rob McKay, funded the Secretary of State Project, an American non-profit, 527 political action committee focused on electing reform-minded progressive Secretaries of State in battleground states, who typically oversee the election process.[10] The Alliance was critical in getting California Secretary of State Debra Bowen and Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie re-elected.
She was married to real estate developer Jay Furman; they had two children: Barack Obama's chief economic advisor Jason Furman and federal judge Jesse Furman.[11] They later divorced.