Rita E. Hauser (Chair) is President of the Hauser Foundation and an international lawyer who was a senior partner at the law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan for more than 20 years. She served on President Barack Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board and on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President George W. Bush. Elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2012, Dr. Hauser chaired for two decades the International Peace Institute and was on the Advisory Board of the International Crisis Group. She also chaired the American Ditchley Foundation, supporting Great Britain’s leading conference center, and was elected a governor of the British Ditchley Foundation in 2010. She was a director of the International Advisory Council of the Lowy Institute for International Policy (Australia), the International Institute for Strategic Studies (UK; 1996-2006), and the RAND Corporation (1999-2009). A graduate of Hunter College (BA), Dr. Hauser holds advanced degrees from the University of Strasbourg, in France; Harvard and NYU law schools; and the University of Paris Law Faculty. In 1997 she and her late husband founded the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University (now the Hauser Institute for Civil Society). She is a director of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and was a director of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Society for more than 20 years.

Sasha Ahuja is the National Director of Strategic Partnerships at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Prior to joining Andrew Yang’s 2021 mayoral campaign as its co-manager, Sasha served as the Chair of the NYC Equal Employment Practices Commission from 2019 to 2021 and as an adjunct professor at both the Graduate School of Social Work at Touro College and the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College. Since January 2022, Sasha has worked as an adjunct professor at the Columbia School of Social Work, where she continues teaching at the intersections of racial equity and social policy and serving as a trainer for a number of progressive leadership pipeline programs across the country. Sasha received her MSW from Columbia School of Social Work in 2011.

Dr. Lilliam Barrios-Paoli serves as Senior Advisor to Hunter College President Jennifer J. Raab, with a focus on special projects and community partnerships. She came to Hunter in 2016 after several decades in the top ranks of New York City government and the nonprofit sector. In successive posts during the Koch and Giuliani administrations, she headed four city agencies: the Departments of Employment, Personnel, and Housing Preservation and Development, and the Human Resources Administration. Mayor Bloomberg named her Commissioner of the Department for the Aging, and during Mayor de Blasio’s first term, she was Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services. In the nonprofit sector, Dr. Barrios-Paoli was President and CEO of Safe Space NYC Inc., an organization that serves more than 25,000 children and their families. Prior to that, she was Senior Vice President and Chief Executive for Agency Services at United Way of New York City. She was also Executive Director of Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx, and subsequently chaired the Board of NYC Health + Hospitals, the country’s largest municipal healthcare system.

Joseph A. Califano, Jr. spent 30 years in Washington at the top of the Pentagon, on the White House staff as chief domestic advisor to the President, and in the Cabinet. He worked as an attorney for The Washington Post during Watergate and has represented clients as varied as the Black Panthers and Coca Cola. He also spent years on Wall Street and served on more than 15 public company boards and numerous not-for-profit boards. He is founder of The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA). And he has written 14 books, including Our Damaged Democracy: We the People Must Act and The Triumph & Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson: The White House Years.

Betty Cotton is the Chairperson of Tristate Maxed Out Womens PAC, an organization dedicated to electing Democratic women to Congress. In addition, she is a member of the NYS Commission on National and Community Service. She serves on the boards of Westchester Community College Foundation and The American Jewish Committee Board of Governors, and is a former President of the NY Regional Office of the American Jewish Committee, where she also served for many years on the Board of Project Interchange. In the not-for-profit sector, she has served as Executive Director of the Westchester Interfaith Housing Corporation and the Founding Interim Executive Director of the Westchester Holocaust Commission. After graduating college, Ms. Cotton began her career in Washington, DC working for the Office of Economic Opportunity and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the NYC Human Resources Administration. Following that, she was accepted to the first class of the Hunter Graduate Program of Urban Affairs, earning an MS.

Margaret Egan is Executive Director of the NYC Board of Correction, which establishes and ensures compliance with minimum standards regulating the conditions of confinement and correctional health and mental health care in the city’s jail system. Previously, she served as Vice Chancellor for Human Resources as well as Director of Strategic Initiatives at CUNY. At that time, she also oversaw the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance’s work, developing systemic reforms for the NYC Department of Correction. She has also served as the Assistant Secretary for public safety to Governor Andrew Cuomo, the Director of Policy & Government Affairs for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart in Chicago, on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s public safety transition team, on the advisory committee to Mayor Emanuel’s Public Safety Action Committee, and on Mayor de Blasio’s Behavioral Health Task Force. Ms. Egan holds a J.D. from Loyola University Chicago, Master’s degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin.

Jonathan F. Fanton served as President of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences from 2014 to 2019. Prior to that, Dr. Fanton held the position of Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College from 2009 to 2014. He previously was President of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1999 to 2009 and for 17 years was President of The New School for Social Research. Earlier, he was Vice President of Planning at The University of Chicago. Dr. Fanton holds a Ph.D. in American History from Yale University, where he taught and was Special Assistant to President Kingman Brewster before becoming an associate provost.

Norton Garfinkle is Chairman of The Future of American Democracy Foundation. He has taught economics at Amherst College and is former chairman of the George Washington University Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. His books include A Just and Generous Nation: Abraham Lincoln and the Fight for American Opportunity (with Harold Holzer); Uniting America: Restoring the Vital Center to American Democracy with Daniel Yankelovich; and The American Dream vs. The Gospel of Wealth: The Fight for a Productive Middle-Class Economy.

Sue A. Kaplan is a Research Professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at New York University’s School of Medicine and a Research Scientist at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where she served for two years as Director of the Health Policy and Management Program and for 10 years as the Associate Director of the Center for Health and Public Service Research. Since 2013, she has served as the Director of the NYU Langone Health Community Service Plan, a multi-sector initiative that works to promote health in the communities of Sunset Park and Red Hook in Brooklyn, and on the Lower East Side and Chinatown in Manhattan. Before coming to NYU, Ms. Kaplan was the Vice President for Planning and Director of Special Projects and Policy at NYC Health + Hospitals.

Elbrun Kimmelman has served the nonprofit sector for more than 30 years in development, culture preservation, education, and foreign policy. She founded several organizations that raise funds in the United States to be used abroad to support, for example, the restoration of Osmania Woman’s College in India, the expansion of the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, performances abroad of the London Philharmonic, and a College in Istanbul, Turkey. She is a pioneer in the use of American marketing and advertising techniques for helping to achieve development goals in nations throughout South and Central America, the Philippines, Mexico and India, advising key governmental agencies, implementing and evaluating on-the-ground projects. Additionally, she served as Chairman of the New York Council for the Humanities, as a trustee of the National Institute of Social Science, and is a 20-year board member of Foreign Policy Association.

Stanley S. Litow is a professor at Columbia University and Duke University, where he also serves as Innovator in Residence. The author of Breaking Barriers: How P-Tech Schools Create A Pathway From High School To College To Career and The Challenge for Business and Society: From Risk to Reward, Litow previously worked as President of the IBM International Foundation and as Deputy Chancellor of Schools for the City of New York. Before that, he held positions as President and Founder of Interface and as Executive Director of the NYC Urban Corps, operating out of the Mayor’s Office. He is also a member of the SUNY Board of Trustees.

Robie Livingstone works with a Connecticut-based foundation that has immigrant and refugee services as one of its core issues. She sits on the executive committee and the Roosevelt House advisory board for Hunter College and on the finance and program evaluation committees for Building One Community – The Center for Immigrant Opportunity in Stamford, CT. Prior to moving to the East Coast in 2010, Robie worked for a private foundation in California, serving in program development and on the audit committee, for over twenty years. She holds a graduate degree in physical therapy and works for Yale New Haven Hospital.

Rick Luftglass is Executive Director of The Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund. He began his career in New York City cultural nonprofits, received an MBA at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and spent 16 years at Pfizer, where he served as Executive Director of the Pfizer Foundation and Senior Director of Corporate Philanthropy and Community Engagement. Mr. Luftglass has served as a consultant for private foundations, including the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and as a grants reviewer for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Choice Neighborhoods and the Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhoods initiatives, which were part of the Obama White House’s flagship neighborhood revitalization strategy. Mr. Luftglass has served as a board member of Philanthropy New York and co-chair of its foundation CEO Roundtable. He also serves as President of the board of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, a nonprofit that works to sustain the cultural heritage of urban immigrant communities, and is chair of Economic Development for Brooklyn’s Community Board 6.

H. Carl McCall is former New York State Comptroller and Chairman Emeritus of the State University of New York. His public service also includes three terms as New York State Senator representing upper Manhattan, Ambassador to the United Nations, Commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Commissioner of the New York State Division of Human Rights. Before joining the SUNY Board of Trustees, he was President of the New York City Board of Education from 1991 to 1993, and Chairman of the Public Higher Education Conference Board, a coalition of 14 member organizations that support a strong and vibrant public higher education system in New York State. Mr. McCall has also been active in the private sector, serving as Vice President of Citibank and as corporate director of the New York Stock Exchange, Tyco International, New Plan Realty Corporation, and Ariel Investment. He was awarded the Governor’s Medal of Public Service in 2020 and the landmark SUNY administration headquarters in downtown Albany was renamed the H. Carl McCall SUNY Building. Author of the memoir Truly Blessed and Highly Favored, Mr. McCall was educated at Dartmouth College, Andover Newton Theological Seminary, and the University of Edinburgh. In 2020, he was a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Roosevelt House.

Chris McNickle is the author of To Be Mayor of New York: Ethnic Politics in the City; The Power of the Mayor: David Dinkins 1990-1993; Bloomberg: A Billionaire’s Ambition; and Passages: A Personal Journey. His articles and opinions on finance, politics, and history have been published in scholarly journals as well as the New York Daily News, Crain’s New York Business, and the Financial Times. A former Treasurer of the American Historical Association (AHA), he was a member of its finance committee and chairman of its Investment Subcommittee, responsible for managing the AHA endowment. McNickle has over 20 years’ experience in the asset management industry, serving as a senior vice president at Prudential Retirement Services, the global head of institutional business for Fidelity International, managing director and head of the global investment management practice of Greenwich Associates, and leader of the business strategy department at JP Morgan Investment Management.

Melva M. Miller, former Deputy Borough President of Queens, is the Association for a Better New York’s first Chief Executive Officer, responsible for the overall success of the organization through economic development, long-term planning, stakeholder engagement, strategic partnerships, and the expansion and evolution of ABNY’s membership. Prior to this role, Ms. Miller led the organization’s Census Initiative for an accurate count of New York where she supported and supplemented the 2020 census efforts by the U.S. Census Bureau, State and City of New York, and in coordination with community-based organizations in an effort to help New York State and City achieve the most accurate census count possible. Ms. Miller holds a Bachelor’s degree from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a Master’s degree in Social Work from Hunter College School of Social Work, and received a second Master’s Degree in Philosophy from The Graduate Center at the City University of New York. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Social Welfare program at CUNY’s Graduate Center. She has twice served as a Grove Leader at Roosevelt House.

Joel Motley is an independent director of Invesco Mutual Funds and an independent director of the Office of Finance of the Federal Home Loan Bank System. Joel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Chairman Emeritus of the board of Human Rights Watch. Joel also serves on the boards of the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, Historic Hudson Valley and the Greenwall Foundation. Joel began his career in investment banking at Lazard Freres & Co. in 1985, and he was a founder of Carmona Motley Inc. in 1992. Prior to investment banking, he served as an aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, serving as chief of the Senator’s staff in New York City and surrounding counties. Joel joined the Senate staff after five years of corporate law practice which he began at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett upon graduation from Harvard Law School in 1978. He graduated from Harvard College (magna cum laude) in 1974.

Erik Oken is the Chairman of MidOcean Partner’s private equity business. Prior to joining MidOcean, Oken spent over thirty years at JP Morgan, where he played an integral role in the global success of its banking franchise. Throughout his tenure at JP Morgan, Oken held numerous positions, most recently serving as Global Chair of Investment Banking. He also recently served as co-Head of JP Morgan’s Board Initiative, and as an Executive Committee member for the firm’s “Women on the Move” Initiative.  Previously, he spent more than a decade as Global Head of Consumer Retail Investment Banking. Oken also served as a member of JP Morgan’s equities business, where he ran the convertible and high-yield new issue operations.

Dorothy Samuels is a former 30-year member of The New York Times editorial board and Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. At The Times, Samuels wrote on a wide array of legal and public policy issues, with a particular focus on the justice system, civil rights, and civil liberties. Previously, she served as Executive Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. She is the author of a comic novel, Filthy Rich.

Max Schapiro is a Managing Partner at Wolfson Partners LLC, a financial advisory and investment banking firm. Previously, he was Vice President at The Raine Group, an integrated merchant bank advising and investing in high growth sectors of technology, media and telecom. Before that he was an Associate Analyst at Goldman Sachs. Mr. Schapiro received a Bachelors of Science in Economics and Finance Management from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Douglas E. Schoen has more than 40 years of experience as a pollster and political consultant. A founding partner and principal strategist for Penn, Schoen & Berland, he is widely recognized as one of the co-inventors of overnight polling. Schoen was named Pollster of the Year in 1996 by the American Association of Political Consultants for his contributions to the President Bill Clinton reelection campaign. His political clients include New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Indiana Governor Evan Bayh, and his corporate clients include AOL Time Warner, Procter & Gamble and AT&T. Internationally, he has worked for the heads of states of over 15 countries, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and three Israeli Prime Ministers. He is the author of multiple books, most recently publishing, What Makes You Tick? How Successful People Do It – and What You can Learn from Them in 2009, and The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House in 2010. He is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and various other newspaper and online publications. He is also a Fox News Contributor, making appearances on various news programs several times a week.

Daniel Shuchman is the former long-term Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the pre-eminent nonprofit dedicated to defending free speech on campus. He is also fund manager at MSD Partners, L.P., a New York-based investment firm. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Daniel has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

Gregory D. Shufro is a Principal & Senior Financial Advisor at Shufro Rose. Prior to joining Shufro Rose, he was an attorney at Seward & Kissel LLP and Loeb & Loeb LLP.  He currently serves as a Vice President of the board of The Child Center of New York, an organization that serves over 35,000 at-risk children and families each year through early childhood education, behavioral health, integrated care, prevention services and youth development programs. He is a member of the Advisory Board for Andover Bread Loaf, a program whose mission is to promote literacy and educational revitalization through the lens of social justice in the most under-resourced communities and school systems around the world, particularly in U.S. urban communities and public schools. He serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 and his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in 1997.

Susan M. Steinhardt is a co-founder and President of Homework Helpers, Inc. a non-profit that creates computer labs in under-served neighborhoods where students receive homework help and computer instruction and where GED, ESL and SAT prep classes are offered. To date, there are 23 Homework Helpers sites in New York City and one site in Tiptonville, Tennassee. Homework Helpers is actively working with the NYC Mayor’s Office to open additional sites in 2019. Ms. Steinhardt serves as a Trustee for the Hunter College Foundation, the Stony Brook Foundation, and the Hamptons International Film Festival. In addition to active involvement in other community activities, she is a member of the Contemporary Arts Council at the Museum of Modern Art. She is a former Trustee of Hudson Institute and a former National Commissioner and Vice Chair of the New York Region for ADL. Ms. Steinhardt is an attorney who specialized in banking and corporate matters for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, American Express Company, and Ramius Capital Group.

Anthony F. Stepanski is a 40-year veteran of the computer systems & technology industry with international executive experience. His career began with a four-year stint at IBM in the mid-1960s. He has served as a member of the Board of Trustees of Clark University, including a term as Vice Chairman. He also served on the boards of the Westchester County Artificial Kidney Center, the Children’s Specialized Hospital (Mountainside, NJ), the New Jersey Festival Orchestra’s founding organization, and the Beaumont Condominium (New York), where he served a term as President. He recently sponsored a lecture series at Roosevelt House.

Angie Tang is the head of executive communications at East West Bank, the largest publicly listed independent bank headquartered in Southern California. She also serves as senior advisor of Asia Value Advisors, a Hong Kong-based venture philanthropy consulting firm that promotes social entrepreneurship and impact investing. Previously, she held positions including: columnist at The Diplomat, where she contributed commentary on U.S. foreign policy in the Asia Pacific region; Executive Director of the nonprofit Committee of 100, where she led Congressional dialogues and China delegations; and Regional Executive of the U.S. Department of Labor, where she led post-September 11 economic revitalization programs. As U.S. Delegate and staffer to the biannual U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue series, she coordinated policy review and press briefings. Before that, she was head of the NYC mayoral agency overseeing immigration and immigrant issues. Her career in public policy began as a legislative assistant to the President of the City Council.

Lynn Thoman is a professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and also the founder of 3 Takeaways, a top 2% global podcast. At Columbia, she teaches on scaling social impact and creating successful public-private partnerships. She has worked in business, non-profits, and government. She previously worked at American Express in international marketing, strategic planning, and finance. As a Vice President of American Express, she was responsible for setting the direction for marketing for all countries outside the US. She also developed restructuring plans for American Express businesses in the UK, Europe, and Asia. In the non-profit sector, she serves on many non-profit boards (see below) and has also variously been co-president and co-chair of the Lowenstein Foundation. She has also served on government committees such as the Secretary of Transportation’s Advisory Committee on Human Trafficking. Thoman holds a BA from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She has worked in over 40 countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America and has lived in China.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019. She also writes a weekly column for The Washington Post. A frequent commentator on US and international politics for ABC, MSNBC, CNN, and PBS, her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe. Ms. Vanden Heuvel is also the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in The Age of Obama and co-author, with Stephen F. Cohen, of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers. She has been recognized for her journalism and public service by organizations such as Planned Parenthood, the National Women’s Political Caucus, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Community Change, the Norman Mailer Center, the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill, American Rights at Work, and Progressive Congress. During her tenure, The Nation has been recognized for excellence by the National Magazine Awards, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Maggie Awards, GLAAD, and the National Association of Black Journalists.

Adam Wolfensohn is Co-Managing Partner of Encourage Capital, an asset management company formed by the recent merger of Wolfensohn Fund Management and EKO Asset Management. A unique partnership of disciplined investors and creative problem-solvers, the new firm is already working with major asset owners to deploy investment capital to solve problems like global ecosystem decline, climate change, and bringing financial services to the world’s poor. Previously, Adam was managing director at Wolfensohn Fund Management and also managed the Wolfensohn family office cleantech and environmental markets strategies. From 2003 to 2006, he produced the climate change documentary Everything’s Cool that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007. From 2002 to 2003, he worked with Conservation International to create a market for carbon credits from avoided deforestation projects. Prior to 2002, Adam composed music for numerous films, television commercials, and theater productions, as founder and CEO of “Red Ramona,” an award winning music and sound design studio in New York City.