SEC Chairman and Society founder, Harvey Pitt, passed away on May 30, 2023 at 78.
From 1968 to 1978, Harvey served on the staff of the SEC, eventually becoming, in 1975 at age 30, the youngest General Counsel in the SEC’s history. In 1977, he received the Distinguished Service Award, the agency’s highest honorary award. After leaving for private practice in 1978, and for the next 23 years, Harvey was a partner in the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson in Washington, DC.
In spring of 2001, Harvey was appointed to lead the SEC as its 26th Chairman, a position he held through 2003. After he left the SEC, he founded the strategic consulting firm, Kalorama Partners, LLC. First-hand accounts of Harvey’s service as General Counsel and as SEC Chairman may be found in his May 2007 and May 2008 oral history interviews in the Society’s virtual archive. He also described the founding of the SEC Historical Society in a February 2019 oral history.
In 1999, while still at Fried Frank, Harvey was called upon by former SEC Chairman David Ruder to join him in efforts to establish a Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society — a non-profit entity that would capture, preserve and make available the history of securities law and regulation. Harvey, along with close friend and colleague, Paul Gonson, answered Ruder’s call, and later that year, the three founders had incorporated the Society as a non-profit entity in the District of Columbia with Harvey as the Society’s first President.
When he was appointed to serve as SEC Chairman in 2001, Harvey had to resign his post on the Society’s Board. However, the Society remained near and dear to his heart. In that 2019 oral history, Harvey reflected on the founding of the Society: “I believe very strongly in the mission of the SEC Historical Society because I feel very strongly about the mission of the SEC, which is a great agency and an agency I truly love.”
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