Ronald and Barbara Balser

Barbara Balser was born in Richmond in 1939 and moved to Atlanta in 1961. Ron Balser attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree in economics, and Barbara graduated from Boston University with a degree in Public Relations.

Ron started in the insurance industry in 1961 and later founded the Balser Companies in 1968. The nationally-recognized think tank designs special benefits programs for companies including Home Depot and UPS, where Barbara served as co-chair and chief executive officer. Ron founded Balser Art Ventures, LLC, a design, production and distribution company that promotes works of art. His photography, electronic prose, engraved granite benches and sculptures are in private and public collections throughout the country.

Barbara was a founding member of The Committee of 200, a global organization of elite business women. Ron and Barbara founded the Wharton Executive Education Advisory Board where Ron Chaired the Board for 20 years, and has served on Boards of Wharton Undergraduate School, Santa Fe Opera, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, M Life and Balser Companies. Ron currently serves as a National Commissioner of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and is a member of the ADL National Executive Committee. Additionally, Ron is a trustee of ADL Foundation; a member of the American Friends of the Israel Museum; and serves on the advisory boards of The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, The U.S. Board of Historical Royal Palaces, The Board of the Artis-Naples Baker Museum of Art. Ron is also a trustee of the Naples Children and Education Foundation. He is recipient of the 1999 Alumni Award for Distinguished Service from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

In 2006, Ron endowed the Barbara B. Balser Lifetime Achievement Award. Ron and Barbara, former National Chair of the ADL, are founding members of the Georgia Aquarium, the National Museum for Women in the Arts, the Booth Western Museum, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Circle of Freedom Donors. They received the Atlanta Jewish Federation’s King Solomon Society Award, True Blue Award from Spelman College, and are the first Wharton Atlanta Chapter recipients of The Joseph Wharton Award. The Balsers have both been given the Anti-Defamation League’s highly coveted Abe Goldstein Human Relations Award (Barbara in 1994 and Ron in 2006). They have six children.