The Bronx Academy of Letters 339 Morris Ave., Bronx, NY 10451 Joan Sullivan, principal info@bronxletters.org |
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The Bronx Academy of Letters 339 Morris Ave., Bronx, NY 10451 Joan Sullivan, principal info@bronxletters.org |
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Advisory Board Chair: Mike Jackson, a graduate of Yale University, is a Director in the Investment Management Group at Hyperion Brookfield Asset Management in New York. Prior to joining Hyperion, Mr. Jackson held positions at West LB, JP Morgan Chase, and Prudential Securities. Mr. Jackson, a co-founder of Bronx Letters, is also a member of the Board of Trustees for the Williston-Northampton School, and has served on Boards for several non-profit organizations, including the Harlem Youth Development Foundation, an organization that provides financial assistance, emotional support, and career-building employment opportunities to college-bound students from the Harlem community. Mr. Jackson is Chair of the Board's Executive, and Development Committees.
Advisory Board President: Toni Bernstein, a graduate of Tufts University is currently a full time wife, mother of three children and active volunteer in support of the Bronx Academy of Letters. Toni is a founding member of the school's Advisory Board, and in addition to her responsibilities as Board President, Toni serves as the Chair of the Benefit Committee and a member of the Executive and Development Committees. Toni is also a member of a 10th grade advisory at the school which she tries to visit monthly. Toni also works on various committees at the schools her children attend and sits on the divisional board of the Ittleson Center, a residential treatment facility for emotionally ill children also located in the Bronx.
Advisory Board Treasurer: Kimberly Witherspoon is a founding partner of Inkwell Management, a literary agency. Her clients include Kate Atkinson, Anthony Bourdain, Susan Cheever, Michael Collins, Lionel Shriver, and Sophie Kinsella. She has represented several books on education, including Stephen O'Connor's Will My Name Be Shouted Out: Reaching Inner City Students Through the Power of Writing and Alfie Kohn's The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and Tougher Standards. A graduate of Brown University, she currently lives in Manhattan. Kim is also a member of the Board's Executive Committee and Chair of the Partnership Committee.
Advisory Board Secretary: Eleanor Jackson is a literary agent at Queen Literary Agency. Prior to joining Queen Literary, Eleanor worked at InkWell Literary Management. She joined Inkwell after attending the Columbia Publishing Course and graduating from Colby College, where she won the Elmira Nelson Jones Prize for Creative Writing and was the business editor for the campus literary magazine. Eleanor joined the Advisory Board in 2005, and is currently a member of the Executive and Benefit Committees.
Reagan Arthur , an Executive Editor at Little, Brown, joined the Advisory Board in 2008. Previously, Reagan was the founding editor of Picadou USA at St. Martin's Press. Writers Reagan has worked with include Kate Atkinson, Judy Budnitz, Oscar Casares, Elizabeth Crane, Rachel Cusk, Tony Earley, Joshua Ferris, Caitlin Flanagan, Tim Gautreaux, Elizabeth Kostova, George Pelecanos, Ian Rankin, Joanna Scott and Lisa Selin Davis. Reagan is currently a member of the Partnership and Benefit Committees.
John P. Avlon, a graduate of Yale University, is currently Director of Speechwritng and Deputy Director of Policy for the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Campaign. Mr. Avlon previously served as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's chief speechwriter and deputy communications director and wrote a twice-weekly column for The New York Sun. He is founder and co-owner of a speechwriting company called Prides Crossing Executive Communication. In the fall of 2002, John's essay about September 11, entitled "The Resilient City," appeared in Empire City: New York Through the Centuries, an anthology published by Columbia University Press. Mr. Avlon is a member of the Board's Advisory Council and Partnership Committee.
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Kim Bendheim a a graduate of Harvard University, taught English as a second language at Fordham until May. She received two master's degrees, in English from City College in New York and in individualized study from New York University. Her father is the president of the Leon Lowenstein Foundation in New York. Her mother is the author of “East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart” (Perseus, 1997). Ms. Bendheim was a teaching artist for seven years through LEAP (Learning Through An Expanded Arts Program) in New York Public Schools. A writer, she has published in The New York Times, The LA Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune and The Forward, among other publications. Ms.Bendheim is a member of the Board's Advisory Council and Partnership Committee.
Christina Bennison received her undergraduate degree in history from Princeton University. She worked for a year and a half as an analyst at Morgan Stanley, then joined Take the Field in 2002 to help create the Academy for Careers in Sports - another New Visions high school in the South Bronx. She is currently working as a Development Associate at Citigroup and previously worked as a program director at the Urban Assembly and assisted in the development of five new theme-based schools set that opened in the fall of 2004. Christina is a founding member of the Advisory Board and currently serves on the Development and Education Committees.
Jody Brandt, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist. She received her undergraduate from Brown University and doctorate in clinical psychology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in early childhood development through the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services and is currently training in child and adolescent psychoanalysis. Jody has a private practice in downtown Brooklyn, where she works with children, adolescents, and adults. She also consults for Sanctuary for Families, one of the leading providers of comprehensive domestic-violence services in NYC, and Grand Street Settlement through their Early Head Start program. Jody has also provided consultation to the Del Campo International School, a private, bilingual school in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Piper Darley joined the Advisory Board in 2004 and is currently a member of the Board's Advisory Council and Partnership Committee. Ms. Darley received her undergraduate degree from Barnard College here in New York City. She worked for three years as an art director at Thoughtbubble Productions, a multimedia company specializing in entertainment. She is currently working at R/GA, an interactive advertising agency.
Jhenefer Erazo joined the Advisory Board in 2003, and is a member of the Board's Advisory Council and Partnership Committee. Jhenefer received her undergraduate degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology here in New York City. Jhenefer has worked in fashion for eight years, and is currently working as a Merchandising and Production Manager at Jones New York. Prior to joining Jones New York, Jhenefer worked as Associate Merchandise and Production Planner for predecessor Kasper ASL.
Margie Fox joined the Advisory Board in 2007, and is a member of the Benefit and Education Committees. Margie is a Co-Founder of Maloney & Fox, an integrated marketing communications firm. Prior to co-founding Maloney & Fox, Margie was a vice president and associate creative director at Patrice Tanaka & Company, Inc. Previously, she worked at Ogilvy PR Worldwide, Brouillard Communications, Golin/Harris and the New York City Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Jodie Freeman is an ardent supporter of public schools and will have three children in the schools in her neighborhood of Westchester. She is an active board member of Sanctuary for Families, the leading provider of comprehensive domestic-violence services in NYC, and has successfully run its annual benefit since 2002. Jodie graduated from Tufts University in 1984 and spent the next thirteen years in various brand-management and marketing positions with Coach, Liz Claiborne, The Gap, and Macy's. Jodie is a founding member of the Advisory Board and is currently a member of the Executive and Benefit Committees, and is Co-Chair of Bronx Letters' 2008 Annual Benefit.
Robert Freeman joined the Advisory Board in 2005. Mr. Freeman is a member of the Technology, Media and Communications group and head of the Sports practice at Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner LLP. Prior to focusing his practice primarily on IP related transaction matters, Mr. Freeman was an intellectual property litigator, with a particular emphasis on patents and copyright. He has extensive experience counseling clients with respect to complex transactions relating to sports, entertainment, emerging technologies and computer law, and counseling on general business and intellectual property matters. Mr. Freeman was recognized in both 2006 and 2007 as a “New York Super Lawyer” by Law & Politics magazine in the area of Sports and Entertainment.
Stephen Gandel is a staff writer at Money magazine, where he covers the stock market and the economy. Prior to joining Money, Steve was the senior Wall Street reporter for Crain's New York Business. He has also held positions as a reporter and an editor at Individual Investor magazine and as a business reporter at The Riverfront Times in St. Louis. Steve has been a guest market commentator on CBS's New York affliate, WNYC, MSNBC, WB11's Morning News, NY1, and Fox Five. In 2003, he was the recipiant of the gold award for feature writing from the Association of Area Business Publications. A New Jersey
native, Gandel graduated cum laude with a B.A. in economics and English from Washington University in St. Louis.
Will Georgantas was the founding Program Coordinator of the Bronx Academy of Letters. Will received a B.A. in English from Yale University and his MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. His diverse publishing experience includes work as a newspaper reporter, book-series editor, freelance writer, songwriter, and, most recently, as a freelance copy editor. He was a 1999 MacDowell Colony fellow. Will joined the Advisory Board in 2006 and is currently a member of the Executive and Benefit Committees.
Matt Hicks joined the Advisory Board in 2006, and is a member of the Endowment and Development Committees. Mr. Hicks is an Associate Vice-President on the Residential MBS/ABS Investment Team at Hyperion Brookfield Asset Management in New York. Previously at Hyperion Brookfield, Mr. Hicks was an Analyst in the Quantitative Research Group, with responsibility for the mortgage analytics development, risk management and financial reporting. Mr. Hicks holds a BS in Computer Engineering from University of Pittsburgh, graduating Magna Cum Laude.
Eric Katz graduated from Yale in 1996 with a B.A. in English, and has since worked in the fields of technology and education. For two years he taught math, English and creative writing at the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice, then pursued an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College in 2005. He is currently the Chief Financial Officer of Metrofuser, LLC.
Natalie Mackiel Jackson joined the Advisory Board in 2006, and is currently Chair of the Board's Education Committee. Mrs. Jackson is an associate attorney at Wolf Popper LLP. She is a graduate of Indiana University’s Bloomington (B.S. in Business Management and International Studies, 2002) and the University of Nebraska College of Law, with distinction (J.D. 2005). She was an Executive Editor of the Nebraska Law Review (2003-2005) and authored "Walking the Straight and Narrow: Another Squeeze on Tribal Civil Jurisdiction over Nonmembers in Smith v. Salish Kootenai College," 83 NEB LAW REV 1325 (2005). Prior to joining Wolf Popper, Mrs. Jackson practiced corporate law at Kutak Rock, LLP in Omaha, Nebraska.
Alisa MacNeille joined the Advisory Board in 2004 and is currently a member of the Board's Education and Benefit Committees. As a member of the editorial staff at Columbia Business School, Alisa edited the School's alumni magazine and several of its divisional newsletters before deciding to stay home to freelance and take care of her kids. Among the original group hired to run the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex, Alisa worked on a variety of marketing initiatives there for four years. She attended Indiana University and Columbia.
Jenny McPhee is a co-founder of the Bronx Academy of Letters and is also a founding member of the Advisory Board, currently serving on the Executive and Education Committees. She is the author of the novels The Center of Things, No Ordinary Matter, and A Man of No Moon. She is the co-author with Martha and Laura McPhee of Girls: Ordinary Girls and Their Extraordinary Pursuits. She is a translator and curates the film program at the Italian Academy for Advanced Study at Columbia University.
Amy Scheibe joined the Advisory Board in 2003, and is currently a member of the Board's Advisory Council and Partnership Committee. Amy is the author of the novel, What Do You Do All Day?, and is an executive editor at the Perseus Books Group's Counterpoint imprint. Prior to joining Perseus Books, Amy worked at Simon and Schuster, where she served as executive editor at Free Press, and at Doubleday, where she acquired a list of successful books that included Myla Goldberg's bestselling novel Bee Season, David Rakoff's Fraud, Schooling by Heather McGowan, The Center of Things by Jenny McPhee and A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel.
Samantha Skey joined the Advisory Board in 2004 and is a member of the Development and Executive Committees. As Senior VP of Strategic Marketing for Alloy Media and Marketing, Samantha Skey manages the development of cross-platform youth advertising and marketing programs for myriad Fortune 500 companies. Before joining Alloy, Ms. Skey held a variety of sales and marketing management positions at CNET, Interactive Imaginations, and the Walt Disney Company. Ms Skey is on the advisory board of YouthNoise and is involved in multiple youth-related cause marketing efforts. She holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Hamilton College.
Darnley Stewart is currently Of Counsel at Giskan, Solotaroff & Anderson LLP, specializing in plaintiffs'-side employment work. Darnley previously worked at Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP as the partner principally responsible for the firm's employment discrimination and civil rights practice. Darnley obtained her undergraduate degree from Princeton University and her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law. Ms. Stewart joined the Advisory Board in 2007, and is a member of the Education and Development Committees.
Mark Svenvold is Poet in Residence at Fordham University, where he teaches creative writing and literature. His first book of nonfiction, Elmer McCurdy: The Misadventures in Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw
(Basic Books/HarperCollins 4th Estate, England) is being developed into a movie. A graduate of the MFA program at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he was a Teaching-Writing Fellow, Svenvold is a recipient of a Discovery/The Nation prize in poetry. Soul Data, 
Louisa Thomas joined the Advisory Board in 2006, and is currently a member of the Board's Advisory Council and Partnership Committee. Ms. Thomas is a writer living in Berlin. Before moving to Germany, she was a member of the editorial staff of The New Yorker. She received her undergraduate degree in English from Harvard. Her writing has appeared in The New Times, The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, The Washington Post and other publications.
Rick Whitaker is the author of two books and has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Observer, and many other publications. He is Director of Music and Theater at Columbia University's Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, and also serves on the Board of the Franklin Stage Company. He teaches the Professional Writing Seminar at Bronx Letters. Rick joined the Advisory Board in 2005, and is currently a member of the Benefit and Education Committees.
Audrey Zinman joined the Advisory Board in 2007 and is currently a member of the Benefit and Development Committees. Audrey received her BA at Duke University, and Attended NYU's Gallatin School with a concentration in Fundraising. Audrey’s public relations, marketing and development background has led her to serve on the Riverdale Country School's Board of Trustees and the Board of Advisors for Duke University and Trinity College. Ms. Zinman works in education and special needs education on the Board of Directors for the National Center for Learning Disabilities.