Job Creators Network

JCN was a proponent of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017. In 2021, it unsuccessfully sued Major League Baseball on behalf of Georgia businesses it said were unjustly harmed when the league moved the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver.  ^{2 3}

Job Creators Network Foundation is the research and education arm of Job Creators Network.  ⁴

Background

Job Creators Network is a conservative-leaning group advocating for free enterprise and entrepreneurship that was founded by Bernard “Bernie” Marcus, a co-founder and former CEO of Home Depot.  ¹

JCN provides companies with employer-to-employee education materials to promote job-creating policies and to warn about the dangers posed by bad public policy to companies and workers. The organization also enlists CEOs and small business leaders to educate students and the public about free enterprise and entrepreneurship.  ¹

The late Herman Cain, a former Republican presidential candidate and one-time CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, identified himself as a co-founder of JCN. However, JCN president Alfredo Ortiz has downplayed Cain’s role in the organization. ⁵

Advocacy

In 2025, Job Creators Network ran a campaign to prevent the provisions established in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 from expiring at the end of 2025. The campaign included national television appearances, online educational videos, and a national ad featuring former President John F. Kennedy explaining why tax cuts make sense. Legislation was passed in July 2025 that included lower tax rates for pass-through businesses, immediate expensing of capital equipment, and making the 20 percent small-business deduction permanent. ⁶

Prior to this, JCN teamed with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) to advocate for the initial passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. JCN ran a multi-million-dollar campaign and sent more than 550,000 emails to members of Congress to push the tax bill. ²

The JCN Women’s Coalition was established to assist female entrepreneurship. JCN claims that U.S. women own more than 39 percent of privately held firms. ⁷

In 2015, Job Creators Network established a partnership with the National Association of Women Business Owners to provide employer and employee resources to about 5,000 women-owned businesses. ⁸

JCN has formed coalitions with state, local, and regional organizations to support its advocacy work. As of 2022, some of JCN’s partners included the Network for Educational Opportunity, FreedomWorks, the National Restaurant Association, Turning Point USA, the LIBRE Initiative, the American Seniors Association, Georgia Motor Trucking Association, the North Carolina Free Enterprise Association, the Jesse Helms Center Foundation, the National Association of Entrepreneurship, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Council of State Chambers, and Americans for Prosperity. ⁹

Twitter suspended Job Creators Network’s account in early 2021 for allegedly “violating rules against platform manipulation and spam.” The suspension came two weeks after Ortiz wrote an op-ed favoring federal regulation of social media companies as a public utility. The account was later restored.  ^{10 11}

Litigation

In May 2021, Job Creators Network sued Major League Baseball on behalf of Georgia business owners over the decision to move the MLB All-Star game out of Atlanta to Denver because of the passage of a Georgia voting reform law. The complaint alleged the politically motivated move cost Georgia businesses $100 million.  ³

In June 2021, JCN dropped the lawsuit after U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni of the Southern District of New York denied the request for an injunction to force Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game back to Georgia. ¹²

After almost one million jobs were added in the second quarter of 2021, Job Creators Network president Alfredo Ortiz called it “a vaccine-induced job recovery.”In September 2021, the JCN announced it planned to sue the Biden administration over the planned COVID-19 vaccine mandate for companies with 100 or more employees. JCN defended a company’s right to require vaccines of employees but said the federal government should not compel this. The Job Creators Network Foundation created a Legal Action Fund to handle the lawsuit.  ^{13 14 15}

Financials

According to its 2024 tax return, JCN generated $5.9 million in revenue from contributions and grants. ¹⁶

Bernard Marcus initially contributed $500,000 to JCN. The Marcus Foundation, his family foundation, gave another $1 million to the organization in 2015. ⁵

Besides Marcus, several other conservative-leaning and pro-business nonprofits have contributed to JCN. Other donors have included the Anschutz Foundation, the John William Pope Foundation, and the Retail Industry Leaders Association. Hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer have donated more than $300,000 to JCN through the Mercer Family Foundation. ¹⁷

In 2024, JCN paid out $1 million in salaries and compensation. Its total expenses were $4.3 million. Its biggest expense was $2.4 million spent on media outreach. JCN spent another $1 million on marketing, including $354,500 in grants. It spent $224,225 on education efforts.  ^{18 19}

JCN’s largest grant of 2024 was $235,000 given to the Keep America America Action Fund. ²⁰

Leadership

As of 2026, Alfredo Ortiz was the CEO of JCN. At that time, Ortiz was also a co-host of JCN’s Main Street Matters podcast and sat on the board of the Harvard Salient, a right-of-center student publication at Harvard University. Ortiz previously served as commissioner to the White House Hispanic Prosperity Initiative during the first Trump administration. He previously worked in marketing and as a corporate strategy consultant for several Fortune 500 companies. ²¹

As of 2026, Brad Anderson was the chair of the Executive Board of JCN. Anderson previously worked as CEO and vice chair of Best Buy. ¹

As of its 2024 tax filing, other members of the board included Club for Growth co-founder Stephen Moore, Ditch Digger CEO and one-time Republican primary candidate for Governor of Illinois Gary Rabine, former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, and Kentucky State Senator Ralph Alvarado (R-Winchester). ²²