As has been his pattern, Michael R. Klein is actively engaged in a wide variety of activities.

Mike remains the Chairman of the Board of CoStar Group, Inc. (www.costar.com) (CSGP on NASDAQ), a public company he co-founded with Andy Florance in 1987 to address the issues that led to the collapse of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s. Initially focused on the lack of adequate supply, demand and pricing information about commercial real estate in the United States, CoStar began by providing 24/7 internet access to comprehensive real time information about office buildings. CoStar has since evolved into a comprehensive online source of information and marketing tools covering all of real estate – commercial, retail, hotel, raw land, industrial and multi-family and single family structures throughout the United States, Great Britain, France and elsewhere. CoStar provides online tools to identify and qualify buyers and prospective tenants through www.apartments.com, Loopnet.com, TenX.com, homes.com as well as other online tools to assist those searching for or offering retail spaces, industrial sites and raw land. In addition, CoStar provides data and software tools concerning those real estate types to owners, analysts, lenders and brokers.

Mike’s background as a securities lawyer (35 years as a partner of the leading international law firm Wilmer & Hale), which led him to believe in the importance of information for efficient decision-making, and the ratification of that belief with CoStar, enabled Mike to envision and support several other organizations that use information technology to contribute to the betterment of society by providing real time online access to information that might enable us as citizens to improve our governance.

The first of these was The Sunlight Foundation (www.sunlightfoundation.com), a non-profit entity which Mike co-founded in December 2005, through which he and his Sunlight colleagues attempted to improve the transparency and thus the accountability and performance of our democratic government. The Sunlight Foundation took its name and raison d’être from the observation of Louis Brandeis: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants, electric light the best policeman.” The foundation sought to apply this principle – that people behave better when they believe they are being observed – by using the then emerging IT tools to make accessible, online through open source software, a raft of information about the members and work of the Congress and state and local governments, and those who seek to influence them as well. Over the next 15 years Sunlight led and facilitated efforts to vastly increase the ability of the working press, bloggers and ordinary citizens to access and use a vast and growing amount of information, and software tools to make that information intelligible. In 2020, having determined that the success of The Sunlight Foundation had adequately stimulated an ongoing robust universe of such activists and activities, Sunlight’s IP and remaining activities were merged into The Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University (cyber.harvard.edu), which Mike has supported and endowed. 

With similar objectives and means, in the aftermath of the Newtown school massacre, in 2013 Mike founded and remains the Chairman and CEO of Gun Violence Archive, Inc., (www.gunviolencearchive.org), a non-profit entity whose mission is to collect and publish online an archive of information about all verifiable incidents of gun use in the United States in order better to inform the debate over Second Amendment and gun regulation issues. It has today evolved into the most widely used source for the media and others seeking accurate timely information about gun violence in this country.

Then, in 2017, Mike co-founded and is funding the Global Warming Mitigation Project (www.kcurveprize.org), through which panels of widely recognized climate scientists and activists from around the world, award Keeling Curve Prizes for each year’s most promising new ideas to mitigate global warming, in addition to arranging Constellation Internships for outstanding climate science students .

Mike also remains active in various cultural activities.

Mike from 2007 through 2021 served as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Shakespeare Theatre Company (www.shakespearetheater.org),which since its founding in 1985, has endeavored to be the nation’s leading force in the presentation and preservation of classic theatre, by presenting the classics in an accessible, imaginative American style that honors playwrights’ language and intentions while viewing their plays through a 21st-century lens. At STC’s Harman Center for the Performing Arts and STC’s other venue, named in 2019 the Michael R Klein Theater, both in the center of the nation’s capitol, STC presents its own productions and provides state-of-the-art, affordable, midsized venues to other outstanding local, national and international performing arts companies. STC encourages synergy among sister arts organizations, and stimulates an ongoing artistic dialogue that embraces all the performing arts, and offers education and accessibility programs to engage diverse audiences in the arts.

From 2018 through July 2024, Mike has also served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Aspen Music Festival and School (www.aspenmusicfestival.com), the nation’s leading summer program for advanced education of succeeding generations of classical musicians. Each summer, several hundred exceptional students from leading educational institutions around the world, are selected for extensive performance training by renowned professional musicians leading orchestras as well as academic institutions. He continues to serve AFMS as its Vice Chair. In addition to these leadership roles, Mike continues his pattern of involvement in several other businesses and not-for profit organizations.

In the business world, Mike has been actively involved in other public and non-public ventures. From 1997 until May 2024 he served as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors and lead outside director of Tutor-Perini Corporation (www.tutor-perini.com, TPC on NYSE) a leading international construction company, honored by Forbes and others as the best managed publicly held construction business. He has previously served as a director of several other publicly traded companies, including SRA International, Inc. (www.sra.com, previously SRX on NYSE), a leading systems integrator, National Education Corporation (formerly NYSE), Steck-Vaughn Publishing Company (formerly NASDAQ), and of Republic Waste Company (formerly NASDAQ) all four of which were sold in processes Mike led as a director.

Mike has been associated with a number of non-public businesses, currently including as a director of ThinkFoodGroup, Inc. (www.thinkfoodgroup.com) a restaurant and food organization led by José Andrés, the 2012 James Beard Chef of the Year and founder of World Central Kitchen, engaged in organizing and implementing disaster relieving food programs internationally. Mike also serves as a director of DC Central Kitchen (www.dccentralkitchen.org) which provides culinary training for the previously incarcerated , as well as a wide range of food services to those in the Washington DC Metropolitan Area. In 2022, in honor of his support for it, DCCK’s new headquarter facility was named the Michael R. Klein Center for Jobs and Justice.

Previously, Mike was the co-founder and Chairman of the Board of two of Washington’s finest restaurants: Le Pavillon (1978- 1991) and Le Paradou (2004-2009).

Other past involvements of note include AStar Air Cargo, Inc. (www.astaraircargo.us), a freight airline serving DHL, Inc. of which he was a director and substantial owner, Oz Fitness, a chain of fitness clubs in the Pacific Northwest of which he was also a director, and Zenith Gallery, Inc. (www.zenithgallery.com) a contemporary art and crafts gallery in DC, of which he was a co-founder and Chairman.

In the non-profit world, Mike has been involved in a wide array of organizations and activities. Currently, these include service as a director of The American Himalayan Foundation (www.american-himalayan.org) which supports indigenous medical, educational, health and cultural activities throughout Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan in the Himalayan region, as the Chairman of Friends of the Hospital for Rehabilitation of Disabled Children (Sabal) in the Kathmandu Nepal valley, as a member of the Board of Directors of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. (www.naacpldf.org), and as a member of the Deans Advisory Board of Harvard Law School and of the Committee on University Resources of Harvard University, and as a financial supporter of the Berkman Klein Center on the Internet and Society at Harvard University (cyber.harvard.edu). He has previously served as a member of the Board and as President of the PEN Faulkner Foundation (www.penfaulkner.org), as a board member of two public interest law firms, the Center for Law in the Public Interest and of Advocates for the Public Interest (which he co-founded and served as Chairman), of the Support Center, an advisory support organization for non-profits generally, and as a member of the Board of Trustees of the University of Miami.