Bill Novelli


William D. "Bill" Novelli, , was born in Bridgeville, PA. He became the Chief Executive Officer of AARP in 2002. He remains a powerful influence in American politics. He appeared in, and was a featured speaker at the town hall screening of I.O.U.S.A., a 2008 documentary about the U.S. National Debt.

Education

Novelli earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA, and also an MA at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and a doctorate from New York University. He is of Italian descent.

Career

Novelli was a member of the November Group in the Nixon White House, and went from there to take over AARP in 2002. He co-founded the Divided We Fail campaign. When asked by Deborah Solomon, a reporter for The New York Times, if he was a registered Republican, he answered, "I don't remember. I honestly don't. I may have been a Republican when I was working on the Nixon campaign. In December, 2003, he said, "So far, as many as 15,000 members have canceled their memberships in protest," of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act. The reporter inquired further, "Many Democrats are surprised that you would back a package that provides a prescription-drug plan for the elderly but that prohibits the government from negotiating lower drug prices." Novelli responded:"We have a Republican-controlled Congress, and they believe that if you had Medicare negotiating with the drug companies, you would be fixing prices." Novelli said he earned, as the AARP CEO, "...$420,000 a year. I think my salary is very fair." Solomon continued, "Have you invested any of your own money in the health-insurance business?" Novelli responded, "You mean stocks and bonds? My wife manages that. I honestly don't know. I know that we own a lot of mutual funds that buy insurance stocks. It's a nonissue." He left AARP in 2009. After the passage of MMA, then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert said, “AARP gives you the ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval’ when it comes to seniors’ issues.” “They care deeply about the future of Medicare, and they wouldn’t endorse something that would lead to the end of that program as some critics contend.” In 2017, Novelli became a director of the American Cancer Society.