The Job Creators Network is a group advocating free enterprise and entrepreneurship founded by former Home Depot CEO Bernard Marcus. ^{1 2} The group was a proponent of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 and in 2021 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. ^{3 4}

Background

The Job Creators Network is a conservative-leaning group advocating for free enterprise and entrepreneurship. ⁵

Bernard Marcus, the founder and former CEO of Home Depot, established the organization, first known as Job Creators Alliance, in 2010. Marcus put $500,000 in seed money into the organization. The Marcus Foundation, the founder’s family foundation, gave another $1 million to the Job Creators Network. ⁶

The organization provides companies with employer-to-employee education materials to promote job-creating policies and warn how bad public policy can harm companies and workers. The organization also enlists CEOs and small business leaders to educate students and the public about free enterprise and entrepreneurship. ⁷

Herman Cain, a former Republican presidential candidate and one-time Godfather’s Pizza CEO, identified himself as a co-founder of JCN. However, JCN President Alfredo Ortiz has downplayed Cain’s role in the organization. ⁸

Donors

Besides Marcus, several other conservative-leaning and pro-business nonprofits have contributed to the JCN. Other donors have included the Anschutz Foundation, the John William Pope Foundation, and the Retail Industry Leaders Association. ⁹

Hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and daughter Rebekah Mercer have donated more than $100,000 to JCN. ¹⁰

Advocacy

The JCN Women’s Coalition was established to assist female entrepreneurship. The JCN states U.S. women own more than 11.6 million businesses or about 39 percent of firms employing nearly 9 million people. ¹¹

The Job Creators Network teamed with the National Association of Women Business Owners to provide employer and employee resources to about 5,000 women-owned businesses. ¹²

The national JCN has formed coalitions with several state, local, and regional organizations such as the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, the Colorado Restaurant Association, American Seniors Association, Georgia Motor Trucking Association, Rocky Mountain Food Industry Association, the Highland Ranch Chamber of Commerce. and the National Association of Entrepreneurship. ¹³

The Job Creators Network teamed with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) to advocate for the 2017 tax reform legislation. The JCN ran a multi-million-dollar campaign and sent more than 550,000 emails to members of Congress to push the tax bill. ¹⁴

Twitter suspended the Job Creators Network 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. ¹⁵ The account was later restored. ¹⁶

Leadership

Alfredo Ortiz is the president and CEO of the Job Creators Network, a role he took in 2014. He previously worked for Georgia Pacific and Kraft before becoming vice president for CSM Bakery Products’ Food Service Division. ¹⁷ He is compensated $446,954 annually. ¹⁸

Elaine Parker is the chief communications officer for the Job Creators Network and president of the J , the organization’s research and education arm. Parker previously worked in public relations for Chrysler, then worked as an independent consultant. ¹⁹ Parker is compensated at $220,962 annually. ²⁰

Phil Willard is the chief financial officer and chief operations officer for the Job Creators Network. Willard has previously worked in senior financial roles for companies such as Celanese, Terex Corporation, and Reliant Worldwide Plastics. ²¹ He is compensated at $268,269. ²²

Toni Angelini is the senior director of communications for the Job Creators Network. She previously worked in media relations for the National Federation of Independent Business. Before that, Angelini worked in media relations for former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ). ²³

Members of the board of directors are former CKE Restaurants CEO Andrew Puzder, Club for Growth co-founder Stephen Moore, former Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson, 42Growth co-founder Stephen Bienko, and former Camp Bow Wow CEO Heidi Ganahl. ²⁴

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. ^{25 26}

In June 2021, the JCN dropped the lawsuit against MLB 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. ²⁷

After almost 1 million jobs were added in the second quarter of 2021, Job Creators Network President Alfredo Ortiz called it “a vaccine-induced job recovery.” ²⁸ 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. ²⁹ The Job Creators Network Foundation created a Legal Action Fund to handle the lawsuit. ³⁰

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