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Board and Staff
Elizabeth W. Smith, Chair
Central Park Conservancy
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Elizabeth W. Smith is currently the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Central Park Conservancy, a not for profit organization that is responsible for the restoration and management of Central Park. She began her professional career in New York at JP Morgan in corporate finance and then moved into private equity where she remained for over fifteen years, first at the Prospect Group Inc. and then with the family office of Harry F. Oppenheimer and with Rockefeller Financial Services. In 2002 she joined the administration of New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as an Assistant Commissioner in the Parks Department, where her responsibilities included the agency’s portfolio of public-private partnerships; a large and highly diversified concession and special event portfolio; and the oversight of a number of special projects including strategic planning, a staffing analysis, and a re-branding initiative. From her retirement from public service at the end of 2013 until she assumed her executive responsibilities at the Central Park Conservancy, she served on the boards of the Central Park Conservancy, the Friends of the High Line, the Open Space Institute, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. She is a long-time trustee of her family’s foundation, the Sidney J. Weinberg, Jr. Foundation.
Daniel H. Weiss, Vice Chair
Easton, Maryland
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An executive and art historian, Daniel H. Weiss was most recently president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Prior to joining the Met in 2015, he was president of Haverford College. He had previously served as president of Lafayette College and before that as dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. He began his career as museum shops manager at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, and later served as an associate, then a senior associate, at Booz, Allen & Hamilton in New York. His books include Art and Crusade in the Age of Saint Louis and The Morgan Crusader Bible and he co-edited Remaking College: Innovation and the Liberal Arts College, France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, and The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library’s Medieval Picture Bible. With Marcus Sullivan, he is currently at work on the book Gentle Hero: Michael O’Donnell, Vietnam, and America in the 1960s. Weiss currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Council for Library and Information Resources, and the Shipley School.
Matthew McLennan, Treasurer
First Eagle Investment Management
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Matt is head of the Global Value team and a portfolio manager of the Global, Overseas, US Value and Gold Funds. He joined First Eagle in September 2008 to lead the Global Value team. Previously, Matt worked for Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) in London, where he served as co-portfolio manager of Global Equity Partners, a group he co-founded in 2003 that ran a focused global equity portfolio for offshore private wealth clients. Earlier in his career, Matt was equity chief investment officer of the Investment Strategy Group for Goldman Sachs’ private client business. He joined Goldman Sachs in Sydney in 1994. Matt started his career in 1991 in Brisbane, Australia, with the Queensland Investment Corporation and was ultimately responsible for the firm’s international equity exposure. He was born in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, and grew up in Queensland, Australia. He received his bachelor of commerce with first-class honors and master of international commercial law from the University of Queensland. Matt holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. Matt received his Bachelor of Commerce with first-class honors and Master of International Commercial Law from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Matthew has interests in the field of education, serving as President of the Trinity School Board of Trustees, co-chair of the Board of Dean’s Advisors of the Harvard School of Public Health, and a Board member of the University of Queensland in the United States of America. He is also a trustee of the Board of Directors for the Library of America.
G. Thomas Tanselle, Secretary
New York, New York
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G. Thomas Tanselle, former vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and adjunct professor of English at Columbia University, is president of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia and co-editor of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition of the writings of Herman Melville. Tanselle has previously served as president of the Bibliographical Society of America, the Grolier Club, and the Society for Textual Scholarship. His books include Royall Tyler (1967), Guide to the Study of United States Imprints (1971), A Rationale of Textual Criticism (1989), Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing (1990), The Life and Work of Fredson Bowers (1993), Literature and Artifacts (1998), Textual Criticism since Greg (2005), Bibliographical Analysis (2009), and Book-Jackets: Their History, Forms and Use (2011).
Frederick W. “Rick” Beinecke
Antaeus Enterprises
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Rick Beinecke is president and director of Antaeus Enterprises, Inc., a private investment company in New York. He is a member of the board of advisors of Venture Investment Associates. He was formerly a director and president of the Sperry and Hutchinson Company in New York and former chairman of the board of the Catalina Marketing Corporation, both companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Beinecke has made an exceptional contribution to governance of numerous nonprofits in the arts, education, and the humanities. Among the many distinguished organizations for which he has served as trustee or director are the National Gallery of Art; the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; the Sperry Fund; the Prospect Hill Foundation; the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, where he chairs its Research and Academic Program Committee; and the Wildlife Conservation Society. He is director, emeritus, of the New York City Ballet, Phillips Academy, the Trudeau Institute, and Close Encounters with Music. Additionally, he is a member of the board of visitors, Yale University School of Music, and also serves on the steering committee for One Percent for Culture in New York City. Beinecke attended Yale University for his BA and earned a JD from the University of Virginia Law School; he is a member of the Bar of the State of New York. He served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps from 1966 to 1969, attaining the rank of captain. He was decorated with the Bronze Star for service in Vietnam during 1968. Beinecke and his wife, Candace, reside in New York City. They have two sons, Jacob and Benjamin.
Michael Bierut
Pentagram
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A partner in the design and branding firm Pentagram, Michael Bierut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, graduating summa cum laude in 1980. Bierut’s projects at Pentagram have included identity and branding for the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Verizon, MIT Media Lab, and the New York Jets; environmental graphics and signage for the New York Times, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Walt Disney Company; exhibition design for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; packaging for Saks Fifth Avenue; and publication design for The Atlantic and Billboard. Bierut has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He has served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and is president emeritus of AIGA National. He also serves on the boards of the Architectural League of New York and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. In 2003 Bierut was named to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, and in 2006 he received the profession’s highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in recognition of his distinguished achievements and contributions to the field. In 2008 he received the Design Mind Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Bierut is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art. He is co-editor of the anthology series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design (Allworth Press), and in 1998 he co-edited and designed the monograph Tibor Kalman: Perverse Optimist. He is a co-founder of the Design Observer website and his commentary on graphic design in everyday life can be heard nationally on the Public Radio International program Studio 360. Bierut’s essay collection Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2007 and his monograph How To was published by Thames & Hudson and Harper Design in 2015.
Benito Cachinero-Sánchez
Egon Zehnder
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Benito Cachinero-Sánchez, based in New York City, is an active member of Egon Zehnder’s Leadership Solutions and Human Resources Practice Groups. He is a valued advisor to clients on board governance, senior executive succession strategies, including CEO succession, talent assessment and pipelining, and management of large-scale organizational change. Benito draws on business experience across multiple sectors (industrial, services, healthcare and technology) and an excellent track record in translating business imperatives into effective talent and organizational strategies. Prior to joining Egon Zehnder, Benito served as the Chief Human Resources Officer at DuPont after holding the same role at Automatic Data Processing (ADP), leading complex CEO succession processes at both enterprises. Previously, Benito was the VP of Human Resources for Johnson & Johnson’s Medical Devices & Diagnostics Group. Earlier in his career, Benito was the Corporate HR Vice President for Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures at Lucent Technologies. In 2016 Benito was also elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources. Born in Málaga, Spain, Benito earned a BA in Political Science and Sociology from Universidad Complutense in Madrid, an MA in Demography and a second MA in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. He has an MBA from IESE and serves on its US Advisory Council. He also serves on the boards of Library of America, the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation, and WHYY.
Joanne B. Freeman
Yale University
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Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, Joanne Freeman specializes in the politics and political culture of the revolutionary and early national periods of American History. Her most recent book, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic, won the Best Book award from the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, and the Library of America volume she edited, Alexander Hamilton: Writings, was one of the Atlantic Monthly’s “Best books of 2001.” She is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, and in 2005 was rated one of the nation’s “Top Young Historians.” Freeman’s current project, The Field of Blood: Congressional Violence in Antebellum America, explores physical violence in the U.S. Congress between 1830 and the Civil War and what it suggests about the institution of Congress, the nature of American sectionalism, the challenges of a young nation’s developing democracy, and the longstanding roots of the Civil War.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Harvard University
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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is a literary critic, cultural historian, educator, and editor dedicated to exploring the breadth and complexity of the African American experience and its influence throughout history. He is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University and has published seventeen books and created fourteen documentary films, including African American Lives, and Finding Your Roots. His six-part PBS documentary series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross earned an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, and an NAACP Image Award. Gates also serves as editor-in-chief of TheRoot.com, a daily online magazine. Among many prestigious honors, Gates was awarded a “genius grant” by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, and in 1998 became the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and serves on the boards of the New York Public Library, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Brookings Institution, among others.
Adam Gopnik
Writer & critic
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Adam Gopnik is a writer, critic, and cultural historian who has been on the staff at The New Yorker since 1986. He has written fiction, humor, book reviews, and profiles, and has reported pieces from abroad. He was the magazine’s art critic from 1987-1995, and the Paris correspondent from 1995-2000. From 2000 to 2005, he wrote a journal about New York life. Gopnik edited the anthology Americans in Paris: A Literary Anthology for Library of America (2004) and has written a number of introductions to new editions of works by Maupassant, Balzac, Proust, Victor Hugo, and Alain-Fournier. His books include Paris to the Moon (2000); Through the Children’s Gate: A Home in New York (2006); Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Lincoln, Darwin and Modern Life (2009); and children’s books The Steps Across the Water (2010); The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food (2011), The King in the Window (2005). He has won the National Magazine Award for Essays and for Criticism three times, as well as the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting, and the Canadian National Magazine Award Gold Medal for arts writing. His work has been anthologized many times, in Best American Essays, Best American Travel Writing, Best American Sports Writing, Best American Food Writing, and Best American Spiritual Writing. Gopnik was awarded the medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Republic and received an honoris causa from McGill University. In addition to his work as a writer, Gopnik has been an active lecturer and engaged in many musical projects. He delivered the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Massey Lectures in 2011 as well as New York Public Library/Oxford University Press lectures in New York; the Phillips Lecture in Washington and the Whitney Lecture in New York, and the Shapiro Lectures at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. He has worked both as a lyricist and libretto writer collaborating on projects with David Shire, Nico Muhly, Scott Frankel, Peter Mills, and Melissa Errico.
Kathleen Kennedy
Lucasfilm Ltd.
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Eight-time Academy Award®-nominated Kathleen Kennedy is one of the most successful and respected producers and executives in the film industry today. She joined Lucasfilm in 2012, personally selected by George Lucas to lead the company. As a testament to her standing in the film community, she currently sits on the Board of Governors and Board of Trustees of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Kennedy has produced or executive produced over 60 films, which have collectively garnered 120 Academy Award® nominations, 25 wins, and have grossed over $11 billion worldwide. Among her credits are four of the highest grossing films in motion picture history: Jurassic Park, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and The Sixth Sense, as well as such blockbuster entertainments as the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Gremlins. Her diverse filmography also includes acclaimed dramas like Lincoln, Seabiscuit, Schindler’s List and The Color Purple, and animated motion pictures such as Persepolis and The Land Before Time. Prior to joining Lucasfilm, Kennedy headed The Kennedy/Marshall Company, which she founded with director/producer Frank Marshall, and she co-founded the phenomenally successful Amblin Entertainment with Marshall and Steven Spielberg.
Alan M. Klein
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP
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Alan M. Klein is a partner at law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, where he practices in the Corporate Law department and is Co-Head of the firm’s mergers and acquisitions practice. A frequent commentator on merger and acquisition issues, he is the past Co-Chair of the International Bar Association’s Corporate and M&A Law Committee and for the past seven years chaired the Association’s annual conference. In addition to his law career, Klein is a rare book collector who specializes in first editions of poets, among them Seamus Heaney, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and W. H. Auden. His collection of Stevens and Williams is the largest in private hands. In January 2019, highlights of his collection were exhibited in “Two American Poets: Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams” at the Grolier Club in New York City. Klein is president of the Board of Trustees of the Dalton School and the immediate past chairman of the Board of Directors of Film Forum; his board service extends to Montefiore Medicine, the umbrella organization for the Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Lawyers for Children, and the LaGuardia and Wagner Mayoral Archives. He is a former member of the Board of Directors for Volunteers of America—Greater New York, Inc., and is a former trustee of the Citizens Budget Commission.
Tony Kushner
Playwright & screenwriter
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Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner is widely recognized for his works that tackle the most difficult subjects in contemporary history with a “humanizing act of imagination.” Kushner’s play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 and a Tony Award for Best Play two years in a row: in 1993 for Angels in America: Millennium Approaches (Part One) and in 1994 for Angels in America: Perestroika (Part Two). His other plays include A Bright Room Called Day (1985), a verse play set in Weimar Berlin; Slavs! (1994), an ironic 80-minute meditation on the Russian Revolution; and Homebody/Kabul (2001), which addresses the crisis in the Middle East. Caroline, or Change (2002) was nominated in 2004 for Tony Awards for Best Book for a Musical and Best Score, the latter with composer and collaborator Jeanine Tesori. Kushner has done adaptations of several classics, among them Corneille’s L’Illusion comique, S. Y. Ansky’s The Dybbuk and Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan and Mother Courage. He wrote the screenplays for Munich (2005), directed by Steven Spielberg, and for Angels in America (2003), directed by Mike Nichols for HBO and winner of a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award for Best Miniseries. His books include Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; The Art of Maurice Sendak, 1980 to the Present; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict, co-edited with Aliza Solomon. In 2012, Kushner was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.
Elihu Rose
Rose Associates
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Since 1956, Elihu Rose has been a Partner of Rose Associates, a real-estate investment and management firm that builds, owns, and manages residential and commercial properties in the metropolitan New York area. Rose is Co-Chairman of the Park Avenue Armory and former Chairman of the Board of the International Center of Photography. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science. In 1993 he received the Superior Public Service Medal from the U.S. Navy and in 2004 the Outstanding Civilian Service Medal from the U.S. Army. A military historian, Rose has taught for many years at Columbia University.
Mona Simpson
Novelist
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Mona Simpson is the author of six novels, the publisher of The Paris Review and has recently been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Amy Davidson Sorkin
Writer & editor
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Amy Davidson Sorkin is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where her regular contributions include the magazine’s “Comment” feature. Sorkin has been at The New Yorker since 1995, and as a senior editor for many years she focused on national security, international reporting, and features. She then helped to reconceive newyorker.com and served as the site’s executive editor. Sorkin graduated from Harvard College; she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a trustee of MacDowell, the artists' residency. She lives in New York City.
William R. Berkley
W. R. Berkley Corporation
Edwin S. Matthews, Jr.
Washington Depot, Connecticut
Deborah McManus
New York, New York
A. Scott Berg
Los Angeles, California
Cheryl Hurley
New York, New York
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Ann Beattie
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Christopher Benfey
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Douglas Brinkley
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Junot Díaz
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Gerald Early
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Annette Gordon-Reed
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Langdon Hammer
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Garrison Keillor
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Nicholas Lemann
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Jill Lepore
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Jonathan Lethem
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Thomas Mallon
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Bill McKibben
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Honor Moore
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