Theodore W. Kheel
Theodore W. Kheel is a lawyer, arbitrator and mediator who has participated in the resolution of more than 30,000 labor disputes. A member of numerous fact-finding boards appointed by Presidents, Governors and Mayors, Kheel gained notoriety early in his career for his mediation of a 114 day strike against the New York City newspapers and a subsequent 88 day strike. President Lyndon Johnson enlisted his help in mediating a nationwide railroad dispute. The New York Times declared him “the most influential peacemaker in New York City in the last half-century” and Newsweek dubbed him the “Master Locksmith of Deadlock Bargaining.”
A former president of the National Urban League, Kheel is also the founder of several foundations in the United States and the Dominican Republic. His foundations include the Earth Pledge Foundation; the Association of Joint Labor/Management Educational Programs; Workforce Distance Learning Foundation (WDLF) and Workforce Distance Learning, LLC.; the Foundation on Prevention & Early Resolution of Conflict (PERC), TASK, a private not-for-profit foundation, the Center on Culture at Punta Cana, and the Dominican/American Foundation on Culture Interchange, a U.S.foundation designed to serve as a catalyst on the interchange of Dominican and American cultures.
In November 1991, Kheel was invited by the Secretary General of the United Nations Committee on Environment and Development to chair the Earth Summit Conference to Promote the Pledge to Protect the Earth, held in Rio in 1992. Kheel then formed the Earth Pledge Foundation (EPF), a not-for-profit foundation to create awareness of and interest in the conference. EPF promotes economic growth and environment protection as the twin goals of sustainable development.
The artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, recently gave his latest U.S. foundation, Nurture New York’s Nature, Inc., (“NNYN”) an exclusive, world-wide royalty-free license to produce events and products commemorating their work of art, The Gates, Central Park, New York City 1979-2005. The net proceeds are being used solely to protect and help restore the City’s natural environment and life sustaining biodiversity, to create public awareness of the importance of those undertakings to the health and well being of the City’s inhabitants, and to support the arts for their power to define, illuminate and advance such goals.
In turn, NNYN has entered into a Strategic Alliance with the City University of New York (CUNY) pursuant to which Kheel, through NNYN, agreed to contribute one million dollars in four annual payments and CUNY has created, at Queens College, an Institute to Nurture New York’s Nature.
Kheel is a co-founder of Grupo Punta Cana (“GPC”) together with Frank R. Rainieri, a Dominican businessman. Their partners include Oscar de la Renta and Julio Iglesias. GPC owns and operates the Punta Cana Resort & Club, a major tourist destination in the Dominican Republic. The Resort has built, owns and operates an international airport which has become the third largest in the Caribbean, with international flights as well as charter flights from major cities in the United States, Europe and Latin America and a growing number of other locations.
In 1994, the Punta Cana Resort & Club created the Fundacion Ecologica de Punta Cana and contributed 1,500 acres to the Fundacion as an ecological reserve. In 1999, the Resort joined Cornell University in creating a first of its kind biodiversity laboratory in the Caribbean which has attracted many other academic institutions.
Kheel is the author of the 10 volume treatise, Kheel on Labor Law and The Keys to Conflict Resolution, a book on the basic principles of conflict resolution. He is a graduate of Cornell University, A.B. 1935, and Cornell Law School, LLB 1937. He has been a member of the Bar of New York since 1937, and is a member of the American Arbitration Association and the Academy of Arbitrators. He is of counsel to the Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP law firm.