Candace L. Straight

Candace L. (Candy) Straight is a private investor and investment-banking consultant specializing in the insurance industry and member of the Rutgers University Board of Governors, appointed by Governor Chris Christie. She served as a member of Governor Christie’s Treasury Transition Team. She has worked for numerous corporations including Merck & Co. Inc. and Bankers Trust Company. Straight has served as an advisory director of Securitas Capital, LLC, a global private equity investment firm specializing in insurance and financial services related industries, and from 2006 to August 2015 Straight was an independent director of Montpelier Re, a property catastrophe reinsurance company based in Bermuda. Montpelier Re was acquired by Endurance Specialty Holdings in August 2015.

Straight is currently an independent director of Neuberger and Berman’s mutual funds, which have assets of approximately $45 billion. From 1987 to 1996, Straight was a principal of Head Company, a merchant banking firm specializing in the insurance industry. Straight was president of Integon Corporation from 1990 to 1992 and served as a director until 1995. Straight also served as a director of Integon Life, Marketing One, and Drake Holdings.

Straight is also an Executive Producer of an independent film, EQUITY, staring two time Emmy winner Anna Gunn and James Purefoy, a star of the Fox series, “The Following.” EQUITY, the first female-driven Wall Street film, will premiere in 2016. Gunn plays an investment banker threatened by a financial scandal. She untangles a web of corruption, which forces her to re-examine the rules of the cutthroat world she has always loved.

In 1982, Straight was appointed by Governor Thomas Kean to be a trustee of the Public Employees Retirement System of the State of New Jersey, serving until 1988. Straight was co-chair of Governor Christine Todd Whitman’s Budget Advisory Committee and served on Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s Budget Transition Team. Appointed by Governor Whitman to the board of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority in 1994, she was vice chairman from 1996 to January 2003. She also served on Mayor Giuliani and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Private/Public Initiatives Council and is a former trustee of the New Jersey Network Foundation and a past president of the Financial Women’s Association of New York.

Straight is the past president and co-founder of the WISH List, a national donor network to support pro-choice Republican women for high political office. A graduate of Bloomfield High School, she received her BA from Wilson College and her MBA from New York University as well as an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Wilson College.