Berl Bernhard is Chairman Emeritus of the Aspen Institute where he served as Chairman from 1991 to 1996. A former partner, he is now Counselor to the law firm of DLA Piper. He served as Staff Director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights under President Kennedy and served in the State Department as Special Counsel to Under Secretary W. Averell Harriman and later as Executive Counsel to Secretary of State Edmund Muskie. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson named him Director and Special Counsel to the White House Conference "To Fulfill These Rights."

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Dartmouth College and then Yale Law School, he was a law clerk to Federal Judge Luther W. Youngdahl. He has served as a board member of a number of public and private companies, as a Trustee of Dartmouth College, Overseer of the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, a member of the Board of Visitors of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center, and a member of the Board of Higher Education of the District of Columbia.