Our team.
Rich Braham, Founder
Rich Braham is an award-winning TV news executive, trainer of Network television correspondents, and a tireless advocate for student mental health and safety, following the death of his 18 year-old son, Marquise, from fraternity hazing which led to his suicide.
As the former Director of News Coverage for ABC News, Mr. Braham oversaw global news reporting at ABC’s affiliate news division, NewsOne, and played a vital role in informing millions of Americans each day, helping them to better understand their world. In addition to managing all domestic and foreign news coverage, Rich was involved in identifying, hiring and cultivating many of ABC’s current on-air correspondents. He ran training camps through ABC’s Talent & Recruitment department to help these reporters become better storytellers. As a result of these sessions, the correspondents improved and refined their writing, voice, and on-air performance skills. At the same time he was managing these two key parts of the news division, Rich was also working as a Senior Producer at Weekend World News Tonight. This allowed him to deliver his journalistic excellence to a completely different television audience.
In 2014, Rich’s career took a tragic and deeply personal turn following the loss of his eldest son, Marquise, to fraternity hazing and suicide while a freshman in college at Penn State Altoona. Determined to prevent the death of any other child to hazing, Rich joined with other families whose children died as a result of fraternity hazing. These families, along with the NIC and NPC—the national organizations overseeing many fraternities and sororities —and the Arnold & Porter law firm, came together to form the Anti-Hazing Coalition. Through this partnership, Rich and the other parents helped lead the charge for safer school campuses, advocating for federal and state policies that protect students from hazing. The AHC has been successful in passing several state anti-hazing laws including the Timothy J. Piazza Antihazing Law in Pennsylvania, the Timothy J. Piazza Law in New Jersey, the Max Gruver Act in Louisiana and Georgia and the Ohio Anti-Hazing Act, named after Collin Wiant, just to name a few. Rich and the other members of the Anti-Hazing Coalition also made history when their efforts greatly contributed to the passage of the Stop Campus Hazing Act, the first federal anti-hazing law in the United States, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden on December 23, 2024. As a result of Marquise’s death and Rich’s advocacy, Penn State Altoona also decided to end all Greek Life on campus, and to erect a memorial garden in Marquise’s honor.
Beyond legislative victories, Rich founded the 501 (c) nonprofit, Marquise Braham Best Of Yourself Foundation, Inc. Through the foundation, Mr. Braham is seeking to do more than share his son’s tragic death from hazing and suicide. His goal is to use his vast journalistic experience to warn students and their parents about other potential mental and physical dangers they could face while away at school, such as campus sexual assaults, LGBTQ+ discrimination, racial and religious bias, and school gun violence. His message is simple yet powerful: how we treat one another matters! With almost 4 decades as one of the nation’s leading journalists, Rich has seen first-hand the horrific ways people can treat each other, with often deadly results. Through his powerful and gripping public speaking events on university and high school campuses, Rich is sharing this knowledge with college officials, parents and students. During his dynamic and emotional presentations, he urges young people to choose to be the very best version of themselves by fostering a campus culture of respect, decency and understanding. Rich’s news coverage and lived experience has taught him treating people with kindness and respecting cultural differences, will help avoid future tragedies like the one that led to Marquise’s death.
Rich’s mission is not just about awareness--it’s about action! He is determined to prevent other senseless harm inflicted on young people from hazing, and from other physical and emotional traumas like sexual assaults –the #1 crime committed on college campuses—and attacks on a student’s gender, religious and racial identity. College is supposed to be an environment that inspires our children to become more knowledgeable, curious and well-rounded than the day we dropped them off at school. Rich’s ultimate aim is to have every student return safely to their parents when the semester ends. Far too many families, including his own, know the endless pain that comes when their kids don’t return home from school. He established the Marquise Braham Best Of Yourself Foundation, Inc. to prevent other families from suffering this grief. By combining his journalistic experience with his personal, tragic loss, Rich is committed to using his voice to educate, protect and inform communities of the potential risks. He knows by choosing to be the best version of themselves, our young people will ensure a safer, more friendly and inclusive learning environment for themselves and everyone else.
Our Board
Doug Fierberg, The Fierberg National Law
Over three decades ago, Douglas E. Fierberg expanded his commercial trial practice in Washington, D.C. to establish the only national legal practice focused on representing school violence victims and survivors nationwide. The work began on behalf of a high school student who survived brutal sexual assaults in Washington, D.C. by two assailants, and a college student hospitalized after being hazed at Omega Psi Phi Fraternity at the University of Maryland. From there, the practice went to Texas on behalf of 4 college students killed outside a fraternity house whose chapter president ignored a direct warning from the police the night before to make their operations safer before someone was killed.
What became clear quickly is that misconduct underlying such tragedies – sexual assaults, brutal hazing, uncontrolled drinking, gun violence – had many things in common: toxic masculinity, insular and unsupervised male groups, and delusions grounded in a patriarchy experienced in shaming survivors and defending perpetrators, conspirators, and negligent institutions in shameful ways. Cases successfully handled by the firm that exemplify such issues include:
Freshman high school athletes hazed and sodomized by upperclassmen;
Women sexually assaulted in fraternities that labeled them as “rape bait,” kept scorecards of women assaulted, and advised members to “use more alcohol” to disable women to gain sex;
Universities that exposed males to dangerous fraternity rituals by tolerating these rituals under the guise that “boys will be boys,” while meting out harsh penalties to sororities that engaged in hazing; and
Groundbreaking claims – establishing compelling precedent – against fraternities circumventing the maze of corporate structures and insurance exclusions specifically implemented to deprive victims and survivors of the financial justice they deserve.
Today, the Fierberg National Law Group and its attorneys constitute the premier national trial practice dedicated to serving victims, families, and survivors. Achievements include:
Settlements and trial verdicts against fraternities, colleges, schools, students, perpetrators/rapists, liars, and other wrongdoers in excess of $375 Million;
Success representing students and others killed or wounded in mass shootings and women sexually assaulted by powerful persons in the entertainment industry and professional, amateur, college, and high school athletics; and
Establishment of legal precedent in state and federal courts across the country to hold colleges, schools, fraternities, and other wrongdoers responsible for campus violence.
Rich Braham and I first became acquainted more than a year after his son Marquise died. Rich's first lawyer was not familiar with litigating cases involving fraternities. I didn't accept the case immediately because I needed to establish a link between Marquise's suicide and the alleged hazing he'd suffered at the hands of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity at Penn State Altoona. Through the diligent work of the firm, we were able to definitively make that link and successfully reach a civil settlement for Marquise's Estate. Since then, my relationship with Rich has grown from a lawyer-client relationship to one of a true friendship. Rich is deeply committed to living his life with integrity and seeking justice and truth. He's done that not only as an executive at ABC News, leading their news coverage, but also in his pursuit to ensure the safety and emotional well-being of young men and women entering college, just like Marquise did. Rich's creation of the Marquise Braham Best Of Yourself Foundation, Inc., epitomizes his determination to protect other people's children despite the pain of losing his own child. I fully support the mission and work of the Foundation, and am honored to serve as one of its first board members.
Mike Paul, President, Reputation Doctor® LLC
Mike Paul is president of Reputation Doctor® LLC. He is a top, strategic, public relations, reputation, corporate communications, crisis management and litigation-support PR expert known worldwide by the registered brand name, the Reputation Doctor®. With over 25 years’ experience in public relations, Mike helps build, maintain and repair the leading reputations and brands of global and national corporations, governments, NGOs, as well as famous people & public leaders in both good times and bad. He is listed among the world’s top crisis PR experts by PRWeek Magazine, called “the Master of Disaster” by Business Week, “Mr. Fixit” by Sports Illustrated and named one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior in the U.S. in both 2012 and 2013 by Trust Across America™.
Mike provides global consulting and counseling services to leading corporations, governments, nonprofit organizations and their leaders worldwide. He has also counseled some of the top celebrities and athletes in the world. Some of the clients Mike has counseled over the years include: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization, Citicorp, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Mercedes Benz, BMW, GM, Toyota, United Airlines, Pfizer, Samsung, Verizon, Kraft Foods, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Mark Gastineau, Freeman McNeil, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Aretha Franklin, American Red Cross, FEMA, Rev. Jesse Jackson and many others that can’t be mentioned due to strict confidentiality.
I first met Rich Braham while providing professional analysis to ABC News in response to major political and celebrity stories. After the death of Marquise, Rich requested my help, and of course, I jumped right in... helping to guide Rich and his Family through multiple media requests for interviews, and to secure the best legal representation. I've come to know Rich well over the years, and he is truly one of the finest, most honest and selfless people I've ever met. Despite the tragic loss of his son, Rich's core mission has been to prevent others -- complete strangers-- from suffering a loss like his family has. Through Marquise's Best Of Yourself Foundation, Inc., Rich is looking to leverage his decades of journalistic leadership along with his personal experience with hazing and suicide, to save lives. His mission is to inform as many students and parents as he can of the potential dangers they could face in college. Rich has told me many times that this is what Marquise would want him to do. Showing love and kindness to strangers defined Marquise in his short life, and Rich believes educating families about the dangers students can face in college is the best way to honor his son.