Chuck Collins

Chuck Collins is an author and senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good. Heir to the Oscar Mayer fortune, he donated most of his inheritance at a young age. Collins is an expert on U.S. economic inequality and has pioneered efforts to bring together investors and business leaders to speak out publicly against corporate practices and economic policies that increase economic inequality. He is co-author, with Bill Gates Sr., of Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes. Chuck is the co-founder of Wealth for Common Good. Collins is the great-grandson of German-born meatpacker Oscar F. Mayer (founder of the Oscar Mayer food corporation), and is the grandson of the American pianist and composer Edward Joseph Collins. Collins lives in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston with his partner, his daughter, and his partner's children.