Howard L. Wolk is Co-President of The Cross Country Group (CCG), a privately-held organization consisting of technology-enabled emergency assistance, direct marketing and customer service businesses serving global corporate clients in the automotive, insurance, real estate and financial services industries. The company enjoys strategic relationships with global corporations such as Ford, Toyota, Liberty Mutual, Progressive, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Duke Energy and many others. CCG has approximately 3000 associates in North America and Europe and serves over 100 million of its clients’ customers. The combined organization will generate over $1.5 billion in revenue in 2021 and is one of the largest privately-held companies in Massachusetts.
The Cross Country Group had its beginnings as Cross Country Motor Club, which was founded by Howard’s father in 1972. Since joining the organization in 1994, Howard and his brother Jeffrey helped grow the business from a single company providing roadside assistance into a multi-business enterprise. Current companies include Agero (the leading provider of roadside assistance, accident management and connected vehicle services in North America, with clients including most major automotive manufacturers and insurance companies), Cinch Home Services (a leader in the home services and home warranty industry with clients including national mortgage and insurance companies, real estate firms, utility companies and retailers), and Financial Recovery Technologies (a leader in the securities class action claims processing business, with clients in the asset management, pension, sovereign wealth, mutual fund, hedge fund and other financial services fields). Other CCG companies have included First Notice Systems (a claims reporting business that was spun out and sold in 1997), NorCross Teleservices (a call center outsourcing joint venture with a NYSE-listed staffing firm that was sold in 1998), eSupportNow (a customer support company for online retailers), MoveCentral (an online mover marketing business that was sold to Monster.com in 2000), TotalMove/Roost (a national consumer real estate and relocation firm based in San Francisco) and ATX Group (an automotive telematics company that was acquired by Agero in 2008 and sold to SiriusXM in 2013). CCG was also a major early investor in China Auto Rental, which is now the largest rental car company in China. As one of the principals and senior executives at CCG, Howard has been actively involved in driving the organization’s growth and in the development of each of these entities. CCG has been the subject of several Harvard Business School case studies.
Howard was a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2013-2015, where he led a study group on entrepreneurship, as well as several panels on related topics. He is currently working on a book about entrepreneurship and political economy under the auspices of the center.
Howard began his career at the New York City law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where he participated in a number of corporate finance, merger and acquisition and joint venture transactions. After Simpson Thacher, he joined the White House as Associate Counsel for the transition team during the Clinton Administration, vetting candidates for positions in the Departments of Treasury and Justice and several independent agencies. He also served as a member of Vice President Gore’s Task Force on Reinventing Government. Howard received B.A. and B.S.Ec. (Wharton School) degrees, both magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania, a J.D. degree from Columbia Law School and an M.P.A. degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Howard is a member of the Massachusetts, New York and DC Bar Associations and is a current or past member of boards of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, ACCESS/uAspire, JArts, the Root Cause Institute (the sponsor of the annual Social Innovation Forum) and several other non-profit and social entrepreneurship organizations. He has also co-produced three documentary films (Keep and Remember, a film about Jewish preservation in the Former Soviet Union, and On the Line and Codeswitching, two films about the METCO busing program in Boston). In addition, Howard founded the Boston Bridges Initiative in 2020 to help facilitate social engagement between city and suburban kids and families in the Greater Boston area; the organization currently works with parent, teacher and student groups in more than 20 towns. Howard lives in Weston MA with his wife Candice and two daughters.