Advisory Board

 

ADVISORY BOARD OFFICERS

 

Mike

   

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.

       

 

Toni

   

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.

       

 

Natalie

   

Advisory Board Secretary: 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.

       

 

 

   

 Advisory Board Treasurer: Deborah Murnin joined the Advisory Board in 2008 and is a member of the Endowment and Education Committees. Deborah is a finance professional most recently at Morgan Stanley in the structured finance group managing auto securitization clients, evaluating principal finance transactions and working with investment banking group on M&A assignments. She previously spent eight years at Chase Securities Inc. (now JPMorgan Chase) and five years at XL Capital Assurance (now Syncora Guarantee), responsible for establishing auto the securitization platform for the newly formed bond insurance subsidiary. Deborah volunteers at Catholic Charities’ Inner City Scholarship Fund.  

       

 

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ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS 

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. .

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

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.

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.

Matt Hicks joined the Advisory Board in 2006, and is a member of the Internal Affairs and Endowment Committees. Mr. Hicks is a Vice-President of Trading on the Non-Agency Residential MBS Proprietary Investment Team at RBC Capital Markets in New York. Previously, Mr. Hicks was an Associate Vice-President on the Residential MBS/ABS Investment Team at Hyperion Brookfield Asset Management in New York. Mr. Hicks holds a BS in Computer Engineering from University of Pittsburgh, graduating Magna Cum Laude.

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.

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.

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.

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.