Arlene Alda graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Hunter College, received a Fulbright Scholarship, and realized her dream of becoming a professional clarinetist, playing in the Houston Symphony under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. She switched careers when her children were young and became an award-winning photographer and author who has written nineteen books, including Just Kids from the Bronx. She is the mother of three daughters and the grandmother of eight. She and her husband, actor Alan Alda, live in New York City and Long Island.
Anonymous found her place in the world of advertising on Madison Avenue. She is now retired, spending time with her beloved dogs, her writing, and work in her community.
Emanuel (“Manny”) Azenberg is a theatrical producer who has had seventy-one productions on Broadway. His first producing credit was The Lion in Winter, in 1968. He became the producer of Neil Simon’s plays in 1972, which include The Odd Couple, The Sunshine Boys, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and Biloxi Blues. Additional credits include Mark Twain Tonight! and Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of La Bohème.
Mr. Azenberg has won twenty Tony and Drama Desk Awards combined. He was elected to the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2009. He received a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 2012. He has also taught theater at Duke University for over two decades.
Jemina R. Bernard graduated from Yale University and Columbia Business School, where she received a master’s degree in business administration. She was an officer of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, worked as an adviser to Chancellors Joel Klein and Dennis Wolcott at the New York City Board of Education, and was senior vice president of regional operations for Teach for America.
Since September 2013 she has been the chief executive officer of ROADS Charter High Schools. Ms. Bernard has dedicated her career to having an impact on low-income communities and young people of color.
Roberto Martin Antonio (“Bobby”) Bonilla played major league baseball from 1986 to 2001. His teams included the Pittsburgh Pirates, the White Sox, the Mets, the Baltimore Orioles, the Florida Marlins, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. As a free agent and because of a favorable deferred payment contract with the New York Mets, Bonilla became the highest-paid player per year in the history of baseball and the three other major professional sports in the United States.
Martin Bregman is one of the leading producers in the entertainment business. Among the more than two dozen films he’s produced are Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon, which was nominated for six Academy Awards and won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. His other films include The Seduction of Joe Tynan, The Four Seasons, Scarface, and Carlito’s Way.
He currently lives in Manhattan with his wife, the actress Cornelia Sharpe.
Dr. Michael Brescia received his bachelor’s degree from Fordham University in 1954 and his medical degree from Georgetown University in 1958. He is cofounder and executive medical director of Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, the only fully accredited acute care specialty hospital providing care for adult advanced cancer patients. He is the coinventor of the Cimino-Brescia fistula, an internationally renowned hemodialysis method that represents a milestone in the field of kidney disease. It is used almost exclusively for artificial kidney therapy. Dr. Brescia has received many awards for his professional work and his service to the community.
Majora Carter is an urban environmentalist and strategist. She graduated from Wesleyan University with a bachelor of arts degree and in 1997 received a master of fine arts degree from New York University. Ms. Carter served as project director (1997–98) and associate director of community development (1998–2001) for the Point Community Development Corporation, working on youth development and community revitalization in Hunts Point. She founded Sustainable South Bronx in 2001. Ms. Carter received a MacArthur “genius” Grant in 2005, and since 2008 has been president of Majora Carter Group, LLC, a private consulting firm. She was responsible for bringing the Hunts Point Riverside Park into existence. It is the first open waterfront park in the South Bronx in sixty years.
Mark Cash graduated from New York University in 1952, went into the army in 1953, and returned to New York University for his bachelor of law degree, which he received in 1957. He received his master’s of law in taxation from NYU in 1963. He practices in New York City, where he does tax law, estate law, and commercial litigation.
Mary Higgins Clark is a worldwide bestselling author, having written thirty suspense novels, one historical novel, a memoir, and two children’s books, in addition to being coauthor with her daughter Carol of five holiday suspense novels. Her books have sold more than one hundred million copies in the United States alone. In her memoir, Kitchen Privileges, Ms. Clark quotes an old saying, “If you want to be happy for a year, win the lottery. If you want to be happy for life, love what you do. I love being a storyteller.”
Ms. Clark has also won many awards for her writing, as well as having received twenty-one honorary doctorates, including one from her alma mater, Fordham University, where she graduated summa cum laude as a philosophy major in 1979.
In 1996 Ms. Clark married John Conheeney, former Merrill Lynch Futures CEO.
Avery Corman is a writer and the author of the novels Kramer vs. Kramer, Oh, God!, The Old Neighborhood, 50, Prized Possessions, and A Perfect Divorce, among others. The first two were made into movies that have become classics. In line with his passion for basketball and his ties to his old neighborhood, Mr. Corman gifted to the City of New York a restored basketball court in his childhood school yard, which became a catalyst for the creation of the City Parks Foundation, for which he has served as a board member since its inception in 1989.
Kenneth S. Davidson graduated from Colgate University in 1966 and a year later taught ninth-grade English in the New Rochelle public school system.
In 1968 he got his first job on Wall Street at Cowen and Co. and five years later founded Davidson Capital Management Corporation, managing hedge funds for wealthy individuals, endowments, foundations, and retirement funds.
Kenneth Davidson is a founding partner of Aquiline Holdings, LLC, and in 2012 started Balestra Advisors, an investment advisory business.
Mr. Davidson has been a member of both corporate and not-for-profit boards, including the Juilliard School, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Carnegie Hall, and from 1997 to the present American Friends of the National Gallery/London.
Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, graduated from Lehman College with a degree in political theory. When he was twenty-three, he became the youngest member in the New York State Assembly, where he served seven terms. He is known as a champion for working families in the Bronx, a leading voice against environmental racism and injustice, and an advocate for justice and equality for all.
Dion DiMucci, singer, songwriter, and guitarist, a founding member of Dion and the Belmonts in his early vocal career, is a multiplatinum recording artist, Grammy nominee, and inductee into the Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame. His hits include “Abraham, Martin and John,” “Runaround Sue,” and “The Wanderer.”
Dr. Mildred S. Dresselhaus, a physicist, graduated from Hunter College with a degree in science, got her master’s degree at Radcliffe College, and received her doctorate from the University of Chicago. She became the head of the Materials Science and Engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977, a physics professor at MIT in 1983, and institute professor in 1985.
In 2012 Dr. Dresselhaus was awarded the prestigious Kavli Prize for her original work in nanotechnology and carbon molecules. She is also the recipient of the United States National Medal of Science and a corecipient of the Fermi Award.
She still practices the violin and plays chamber music as often as she can.
Millard (“Mickey”) S. Drexler attended the City College of New York, got his bachelor’s degree from the University of Buffalo, and a master’s in business administration from Boston University. He worked for twelve years in New York City department stores before moving on to Ann Taylor, where he was president and CEO from 1980 to 1983. He worked for the Gap, Inc., for eighteen years, serving as president and then CEO. He is currently the chairman and CEO of J.Crew and is often called the “Merchant Prince” and “the man who dressed America.”
He is married to Peggy Drexler, a research psychologist and author. They have two children.
Jules Feiffer is a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, and children’s book author and illustrator who has created more than thirty-five books, plays, and screenplays. He is well known for his long-running editorial cartoons for the Village Voice. He was also the first cartoonist commissioned by the New York Times to create comic strips for its op-ed page. Mr. Feiffer has won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award for his cartoons; Obies for his plays; an Academy Award for the animation of his cartoon satire Munro; and lifetime achievement awards from the Writers Guild of America and the National Cartoonist Society. He has been honored with major retrospectives at the New-York Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and the School of Visual Arts.
Wilfredo Feliciano (“Bio”): See Tats Cru
Leon Fleisher, who lived in the Bronx for a short time, is a renowned pianist and conductor. He made his public debut as a pianist at the age of eight and played with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Monteux at the age of sixteen. Mr. Fleisher studied with Artur Schnabel and is linked via Schnabel to a teaching tradition that descended directly from Beethoven. Mr. Fleisher received a 2007 Kennedy Center Honors Award and continues to concertize and record. He teaches at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
Milton Glaser graduated from Cooper Union and received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. He founded Push Pin Studios in 1954 and was a cofounder of New York magazine with Clay Felker in 1968. He teamed with Walter Bernard in 1983 to form the publication design firm WBMG.
He has had one-man shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris. He designed the “I ♥ NY” logo in 1976, perhaps the most reproduced logo of our time.
In 2004 Mr. Glaser received a National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum and, in 2010, the National Medal of the Arts from President Barack Obama. In 1974 he opened Milton Glaser, Inc., and continues his work in the many fields of design.
Grandmaster Melle Mel, born Melvin Glover, is an American hip-hop musician, one of the pioneers of rap, and the leader of the Furious Five. The group produced the song “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It).” The 1983 music video of that song starred the young actor Laurence Fishburne and was directed by then unknown film student Spike Lee. Grandmaster Melle Mel became the first rap artist ever to win a Grammy for Record of the Year after performing a rap on Chaka Khan’s hit song “I Feel for You,” which introduced hip-hop to the mainstream R&B audience.
Sam Goodman graduated from Kenyon College in 1975 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He received his master’s degree in urban-suburban administration in 1995. His master’s thesis was on his Grand Concourse community.
When he graduated from Kenyon, Mr. Goodman became a Westport, Connecticut, school bus driver and served on the Westport Democratic Town Committee. From 1981 to 1993 he served as executive director of the Westport Transit District. In 1993 he relocated to the Bronx full-time. Sam Goodman has worked as an urban planner for the Bronx borough president’s office since 1995. His family has had ties to the Grand Concourse since the 1920s. Mr. Goodman conducts tours of his neighborhood. “What I really enjoy is sharing perspectives on my home community in order to inform, enlighten, and inspire those who want to learn about this place and its people.”
Joyce Hansen is a writer of children’s books that explore African American themes. She has been writing books and stories for more than twenty years. Her first children’s book, The Gift-Giver, was inspired by her students and her own Bronx childhood. Six of her fifteen books were named Notable Children’s Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies and four of her books received the Coretta Scott King Honor Book Award.
Ms. Hansen lives in South Carolina with her husband, Matthew Nelson, and writes full-time.
Daniel (“Danny”) Hauben received his degree in fine arts from the School of Visual Arts. Born, raised, and still living in the apartment in the Bronx that his family moved to when he was nine years old, Hauben’s focus has been the urban landscape. For more than thirty years he’s been painting on location in streets and parks, from windows and rooftops. He is an eight-time recipient of the BRIO Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Bronx Council on the Arts. He recently completed a twenty-two-painting commission for the new North Hall and Library, designed by Robert A.M. Stern, for the Bronx Community College. These panels represent the largest public arts commission since the era of the WPA. His paintings are in public and corporate collections, including the White House, the Library of Congress, the New-York Historical Society, and Harvard University. He currently teaches at the Spitzer School of Architecture at City College and the Riverdale YM/YWHA. He can be seen painting on his show Art and About on Bronx.net.
Dr. Renee Hernandez received his premed degree in organic chemistry from Fordham University and his medical degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He did his residency with Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and is board certified in internal medicine. He went back to the Bronx to serve his community, where he has his office and medical practice.
In 2012 Dr. Hernandez created the first legal rum and whiskey distillery in the Bronx since Prohibition.
Steve Janowitz is a retired math teacher who taught at Middle School 118 in the Bronx for thirty-two years. The last ten years of that time he was the school’s math staff developer, where he held workshops on new teaching methods.
His second career became that of comedy writer for and with his wife, the actress and comedian Joy Behar. He modestly says, “My comedy writing was not by design. It just evolved. I always tried to make Joy laugh out loud at least once a day. Often I would say things that she thought were funny and they would end up in her act. I never thought of myself as a writer, only someone who liked to make wisecracks. It took a real comedian to pick out what was worth repeating on the stage.”
Steve Jordan is a musician, composer, a multiple Grammy Award-winning record producer, and the Emmy Award-winning musical director for the CBS television special Movies Rock. In his early career, he played drums for the Saturday Night Live Band and for the Blues Brothers. From 1982 to 1986 he was the founding drummer in The World’s Most Dangerous Band on Late Night with David Letterman. Mr. Jordan has also worked with Keith Richards and the X-pensive Winos as a composer, producer, and player. Currently, he is a member of the John Mayer Trio, and records and tours with Meegan Voss, his wife, under the band name The Verbs.
Maira Kalman is an artist, illustrator, author, and designer. She is the author and illustrator of thirteen children’s books, including those of Max Stravinsky, the poet-dog. She’s done covers for The New Yorker and created sets for the Mark Morris Dance Group production of Four Saints in Three Acts. She has illustrated several books for adults, including The Principles of Uncertainty, And the Pursuit of Happiness, and Food Rules. Ms. Kalman has had shows of her art in the Jewish Museum in New York City and the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles. She is represented by the Julie Saul Gallery in New York.
Michael R. Kay received a bachelor of arts degree in communications from Fordham University but began reporting while still at Bronx High School of Science and then at Fordham University for WFUV.
He started his professional career with the New York Post as a general assignment writer, with sports-specific assignments to basketball, and later received the Yankees beat writing assignment.
Mr. Kay left the Post for the Daily News, in 1989, still primarily reporting on the Yankees. At that time, Kay also served as the Madison Square Garden Network Yankee reporter and the television play-by-play broadcaster of the New York Yankees.
Dr. Arthur Klein, pediatric cardiologist, is a leader in pediatric medicine. His many appointments, positions, and honors include being a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a Fellow in the American College of Cardiology. He has served as the senior vice president of children’s services and chief of staff at the Children’s Medical Center of the North Shore Long Island Jewish Hospital health care system and is now president of the Mount Sinai Health Network.
Robert Klein is an actor, singer, and stand-up comic. One of his first jobs was as an improviser in the Second City theatrical group in the 1960s. He made his Broadway debut in The Apple Tree in 1967. His first comedy album, in 1973, Child of the Fifties, was nominated for a Grammy and his second Grammy nomination came for his album Mind Over Matter. Robert Klein returned to Broadway in the Neil Simon comedy They’re Playing Our Song, for which he earned a Tony nomination. Mr. Klein has appeared in such films as The Owl and the Pussycat and The Back-up Plan. He is the author of The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue and has done eight comedy specials for HBO.
Robert F. Levine graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1963. He has practiced law for more than forty years, representing clients in all major areas of the media and entertainment industries. Mr. Levine has a particular expertise in the publishing industry, where he acts as attorney and literary agent for many celebrated authors. He also produced the motion picture That Championship Season, based on the Putlitzer Prize–winning play.
Suzanne Braun Levine, writer, editor, and nationally recognized authority on women, families, and the media, was the first editor of Ms. magazine (1972–88) and the first woman editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. Suzanne Levine was named a Ms. “Woman of the Year” in 2004.
She developed and produced the documentary She’s Nobody’s Baby: American Women in the 20th Century, which won a Peabody Award. Ms. Levine reports on the continuing changes in women’s lives in her books, on television and radio, at lectures, and on her website. She is the author and editor of numerous books, including Inventing the Rest of Our Lives, Fifty Is the New Fifty, and How We Love Now.
She is married to attorney Robert F. Levine and has two children.
Born in Poland, Daniel Libeskind became a U.S. citizen in 1964. His firm Studio Daniel Libeskind has designed cultural, commercial, and residential projects around the world. They include the master plan for the World Trade Center in New York City and the Jewish Museum Berlin. Current projects include Zlota 44, a residential high-rise in Warsaw, and Haeundae Udong Hyundai l’Park, a mixed-use development in Busan, South Korea, which when completed will include the tallest residential building in Asia. Mr. Libeskind has received numerous awards, including the 2001 Hiroshima Art Prize, given to an artist whose work promotes international understanding and peace. It had never before been given to an architect.
Rick Meyerowitz is an artist/illustrator and writer, who over the course of his career has done thousands of illustrations for advertising agencies and magazines. He is also the author of eight books, at last count. He and his friend Maira Kalman created the much talked about New Yorker cover “NewYorkistan,” which was published in December of 2011. Later that week, the New York Times magazine wrote, “When their cover came out, a dark cloud lifted.”
Hector Nazario (“Nicer”): See Tats Cru
After graduating from Pratt Institute in 1960, Barbara Nessim entered the New York Society of Illustrators show, which marked her becoming a professional artist, her childhood ambition. Ms. Nessim was one of the few full-time professional women illustrators working in the United States in the 1960s. She carved a niche for herself in the competitive field of graphic design, doing illustrations for publications such as Rolling Stone, Time, Ms., and New York. Her work has been exhibited in museums worldwide, including the Louvre in Paris. Her most recent major show was a fifty-year retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2013.
Margaret M. O’Brien, S.C., attended the College of Mount St. Vincent during and after her novitiate period, where she majored in English and education. She later earned her master’s degree from Columbia University in library science. She has been a teacher, a library media specialist, and a school principal and has overseen the Sisters of Charity mission in hospital care, nursing homes, and hospice. Sister O’Brien’s work has taken her from Staten Island to Guatemala, culminating in her current position as treasurer of the Sisters of Charity, New York, where she has helped maintain the focus on the religious and human values in the midst of difficult financial circumstances.
Sotero Ortiz (“BG 183”): See Tats Cru
Al Pacino’s acting career has spanned more than fifty years and has included plays such as Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? for which he won a Tony Award in 1969. He has starred in many movies, including The Godfather, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Scent of a Woman. Mr. Pacino has won all of the major acting awards—Tony, Oscar, Emmy, British Academy Award, and Golden Globe, as well as having been elected the best actor of all time by the British television audience for Channel 4. He has also directed, produced, and starred in Looking for Richard, a documentary about William Shakespeare’s Richard III, and has performed as Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice both on Broadway and on film.
Chazz Palminteri is an actor, writer, and director. He wrote and performed in his one-man play A Bronx Tale, which led to his acting in the movie of the same name, directed by and costarring Robert De Niro. Mr. Palminteri has appeared in more than fifty films, including The Usual Suspects and Analyze This. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Cheech in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway. He also directed the movie The Perez Family, starring Susan Sarandon and Robin Williams. Chazz Palminteri is a member of the Actors Studio in New York City.
Regis Philbin graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1953, earning a degree in sociology. He is a media personality, actor, and singer, known for hosting talk and game shows since the 1960s. He is most widely known for Live! with Regis and Kelly as well as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Million Dollar Password.
Regis has been in front of the camera for some fifty years and is considered a cultural icon in TV broadcasting. He has beaten his own record in the Guinness Book of World Records for most hours on camera … 16,548.5 hours over the span of his career.
Regis Philbin has recorded four albums of songs. His latest CD is Regis and Joy, Just You, Just Me, which was made with his wife, Joy.
Colin Powell graduated from City College of New York (CCNY), earning a bachelor’s degree in geology, but found his real calling in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) during that time. He graduated from CCNY with a commission as a second lieutenant in the army. Powell served two tours in Vietnam, earning a total of eleven military decorations, including a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star, and the Legion of Merit.
General Powell earned a master’s in business administration from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in 1972. He is a retired four-star general, former United States secretary of state, national security adviser, commander of the United States Army Forces Command, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has advised Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. He is the founding chairman of America’s Promise Alliance, dedicated to improving the lives of children and youth. His many accomplishments also include that of bestselling author of his autobiography, My American Journey.
Amar Ramasar, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, got his performing start at TADA! Youth Theater, in the musicals Prop Shop and Sleepover. In 1993 he studied at the School of American Ballet (SAB) as well as the American Ballet Theatre Summer Program and the Rock School of the Pennsylvania Ballet.
Mr. Ramasar became part of the New York City Ballet as an apprentice in 2000 and joined the corps de ballet in 2001. He became a soloist in March 2006, and in October 2009 he was promoted to principal dancer.
I. C. (“Chuck”) Rapoport is known for his work as a photojournalist in the 1960s and more recently as a television and film screenwriter. Mr. Rapoport’s photography career is notable for his Life magazine photo essay on the aftermath of the tragic Aberfan, Wales, mining disaster and for his exclusive photos of the fitness master Joseph Pilates. From 1970 to 2004 he wrote a dozen Movies of the Week for television and worked as a staff writer and producer for Law & Order.
Carl Reiner is a writer, actor, director, producer, and comedian. He has performed and written for stage, television, and movies and has also written novels, autobiographies, and children’s books. He created The Dick Van Dyke Show, in which he was also an actor. He appeared on television with Sid Caesar in the Admiral Broadway Revue, which ultimately became Your Show of Shows.
His album, with Mel Brooks, The 2000 Year Old Man, was a hit comedy record in 1961. In addition to having received many Emmys, he is in the Television Hall of Fame and has won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Most recently he has acted in the movies Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, and Ocean’s Thirteen and is currently busy writing another memoir.
Jaime (“Jimmy”) Rodriguez Jr. is a restaurateur. His Jimmy’s Bronx Café (1993–2003) included a three-hundred-seat dining room with an outdoor deck that seated another four hundred people. The Café hosted New York Yankees ballplayers and other celebrities. In 2003, Jimmy was listed in Crain’s New York Business as one of the Top 100 Minority Business Leaders. He currently owns Jimmy’s Don Coqui, in New Rochelle, which he runs with his two daughters, Jaleene and Jewelle. It specializes in authentic Puerto Rican cuisine.
A. M. (“Abe”) Rosenthal had a distinguished career of almost sixty years in journalism. He was a Pulitzer Prize–winning foreign correspondent, an associate managing editor, managing editor, and executive editor of the New York Times. Of his many achievements, he was most proud of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States, which was bestowed on him in 2002 by President George W. Bush.
Joel Arthur Rosenthal, known professionally as JAR, graduated from Harvard as an art history and philosophy major in 1966 and soon after moved to Paris, the city he loved. There he wrote scripts for movies, designed tapestries, and worked in the couture world, which he realized was not for him. His interest in jewelry design led to opening his company, JAR, with partner Pierre Jeannet. JAR’s designs are known worldwide for their unusual stones, vibrant colors, and remarkable workmanship. His exhibit at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Jewels by JAR,” is the museum’s first retrospective of the work of a living designer of jewelry.
Andy Rosenzweig has been a policeman, a detective, and a chief investigator for the Manhattan district attorney. As chief investigator, he solved a double murder that had previously remained unsolved for twenty-five years. That case was the subject of an article for The New Yorker and a subsequent book, called The Cold Case, written by New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch.
Since his retirement from the police force, Andy Rosenzweig has gone on to earn a master’s degree in writing. He is currently working on his first novel.
Gabrielle Salvatto began her ballet training at the Dance Theatre of Harlem at age eight. She continued her studies at the School of American Ballet and received her high school diploma from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. She graduated from the Juilliard School with a bachelor of fine arts in dance, where she performed repertoire by Ohad Naharin, Jerome Robbins, Nacho Duato, Eliot Feld, and José Limón. Ms. Salvatto has since danced for Austin McCormick’s Company XIV and Sarah Berges Dance. After a year dancing and performing with the Professional Training Program at the Dance Theatre of Harlem, Gabrielle proudly joined the newly formed company in August 2011.
Lawrence Saper is an inventor as well as an entrepreneur. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1949 with a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering. He had worked in that field for fifteen years when he invented the first synchronized heart monitor and founded Datascope. He is the former chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer at Datascope, where he served in those capacities from 1969 until January 2009. Datascope makes high-tech medical diagnostic equipment. The company went public in 1972. By the mid-1980s it was the market leader in both patient-monitoring equipment and cardiac-assist devices. Its two principal products were intra-aortic balloon pumps and patient monitors. Mr. Saper also started Genisphere, which is a subsidiary of Datascope Corporation.
Julian Schlossberg, movie, theater, and television producer, is also a distributor and teacher of film. During his tenure at the Walter Reade organization, he hosted the radio program Movie Talk, which was on the air for nine years.
His stage productions include Sly Fox, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, and It Had to Be You. He was the producer of PBS’s American Masters special Nichols and May: Take Two, about the comedy team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May. In 1978 Schlossberg left Paramount and went on to establish Castle Hill Productions, a film production and distribution company. Castle Hill has distributed more than five hundred first-run and classic movies to theaters, pay TV, basic cable, home video, TV syndication, and all other motion picture outlets worldwide. It has become one of the largest independent film distribution companies in the world.
Mr. Schlossberg is also a producer’s representative for prominent figures such as Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall, and Elaine May.
His work-in-progress Witnesses to the 20th Century, a documentary series, examines the major historical events of the twentieth century from the perspectives of some of the prominent people of the time.
Louise Sedotto is currently the principal of P.S. 76, the Bennington School, in the Bronx. She received her undergraduate degree from Iona College and her master’s degree from the College of New Rochelle and holds administrative and supervisors degrees from Mercy College.
Ms. Sedotto began her teaching career at Saint Frances de Chantal School in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx and five years later began teaching at P.S. 26, part of the New York public school system. In 2001 she became the assistant principal in P.S. 76 and in January 2003 she was appointed principal.
P.S. 76 was cited by President George W. Bush as one of the highest-performing schools in the city. A photograph of President Bush, some students, and Principal Sedotto hangs in her office at school.
Carlos J. Serrano, playwright, director, poet, and theatrical producer, graduated with a bachelor of fine arts in creative writing from Brooklyn College in 1993. While there, he won the Irwin Shaw Award in Playwriting and the Grabanier Drama Award. He is a member of the People’s Theatre Project’s resident playwrights unit and its literary manager. Mr. Serrano’s play The Ortiz Sisters of Mott Haven was produced at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre in 2005 and was featured as the inaugural play for the forty-seventh annual Puerto Rican Theatre Festival in San Juan and Arecibo in 2006. His other playwriting credits include 24 Hours at Tiempo, The Day a Mariachi Band Followed Charlie Home, Charlie Needs a Shrink, The Blues of Daisy Peña, and Alter Ego. He is currently working on the Nuyorican Circus and Medicine Show.
George Shapiro graduated from New York University and became an agent at the William Morris Agency in New York, after which he became a personal manager and producer with his partner and friend Howard West. They formed their production company and executive produced the Peabody, Emmy, and Golden Globe award-winning series Seinfeld. George Shapiro is the personal manager of Jerry Seinfeld. He has also packaged hit programs such as The Steve Allen Show, That Girl, starring Marlo Thomas, and Gomer Pyle, starring his client Jim Nabors. He also packaged a number of specials for Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, and Carol Channing.
Robert F. X. Sillerman is an entrepreneur whose company, in the past, owned seventy-one radio stations. He is the founder and serves as the chairman and chief executive officer of SFX Entertainment Inc., concert promoters. He was the owner of Elvis Presley’s estate and the TV hit American Idol and was also the major producer of the hit Broadway show The Producers. Mr. Sillerman has been the CEO of Viggle Inc., his new company, since June 2012.
Valerie Simpson, songwriter, pianist, and producer, formed the legendary songwriting duo Ashford and Simpson with her husband, Nick Ashford. Together they received ASCAP’s highest honor, the Founders Award, in 1996 and were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002. In January 2007 they accompanied Oprah Winfrey when she opened her Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa.
At President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, Ashford and Simpson rewrote their song “Solid as a Rock” as “Solid as Barack.” They dedicated it to the president at his inaugural festivities. Nick Ashford died in a New York City hospital on August 22, 2011, of complications from throat cancer.
Ms. Simpson released a new solo album in June 2012, Dinosaurs Are Coming Back Again, that features the last recorded performance of Nina Simone, a second duet with Roberta Flack, and an instrumental version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” Ms. Simpson is especially proud of her induction into the Bronx Walk of Fame.
Dava Sobel, a former New York Times science reporter, is the author of four highly acclaimed books, including Galileo’s Daughter and Longitude. She is also the coauthor of six books, including Is Anyone Out There?, with astronomer Frank Drake. She has received many awards for her contributions to the public awareness of science. Ms. Sobel is currently the Joan Leiman Jacobson Visiting Nonfiction Writer at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Sotero (“BG 183”) Ortiz, Wilfredo (“Bio”) Feliciano, and Hector (“Nicer”) Nazario are dedicated graffiti artists and professional muralists. They are three of the original members of their company Tats Cru: the Mural Kings. They are known individually and collectively for their many letter styles, complex designs, and explosive use of color. Their work has been featured in many publications, music videos, and documentaries.
They are also known for their memorial murals, dedicated to young victims of violence.
Tats Cru has been part of the artists-in-residence program at MIT and has traveled and lectured all over the world, including England, France, China, Ireland, Italy, and Germany.
Their studio is in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, science communicator, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City, and a research associate in the department of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. He also has hosted the PBS television series Nova and the current Fox series Cosmos.
Dr. Tyson majored in physics at Harvard University but was active in wrestling and rowing as well as various dance styles, including jazz, ballet, Afro-Caribbean, and ballroom. He did his graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin, getting a master of arts in astronomy in 1983. Dr. Tyson attended Columbia University and earned a master of philosophy degree in astrophysics in 1989 and a doctor of philosophy degree in astrophysics in 1991. He collaborated with Brian Schmidt, a winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics, in the study of the measurement of distances to Type II supernovae and the Hubble constant.
Dr. Tyson lives in New York City with his wife, Alice, a physicist, and their two children.
Luis A. Ubiñas graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he was a Truman Scholar. In 1989 he graduated from Harvard Business School with highest honors.
Mr. Ubiñas spent eighteen years at McKinsey and Co. and led McKinsey’s media practice on the West Coast, and in 2007 became the president of the Ford Foundation. He stepped down from the Ford Foundation in September 2013.
He serves on the board of trustees of the Collegiate School and the New York Public Library. Luis Ubiñas is also the northwest regional chair for White House Fellows.
He is married to Deborah Tolman and they have two sons, Max and Ben.
Lloyd Ultan is a historian, author, and educator. In 1966 he was named the official Bronx Historian by the Bronx borough president and has served in that position under five consecutive borough presidents. He teaches history at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey, and at Lehman College in the Bronx.
Mr. Ultan has written ten books, including The Beautiful Bronx: 1920–1950, The Bronx in the Innocent Years: 1890–1925, and Bronx Accent. His latest book is Blacks in the Colonial Bronx. He also writes some fifty articles a year for newspapers, magazines, journals, and Internet sites.
Mr. Ultan has lived in the Bronx his whole life and is a devoted advocate, giving walking tours regularly. He is a cofounder of the Bronx County Historical Society journal.
Howard West graduated from Long Island University with a degree in business administration. After serving in the army he joined the William Morris Agency and eventually moved to the Los Angeles office of the agency, where he represented writers, performers, and directors as well as actors. Mr. West specialized in television packaging, bringing together the creative talent and selling the project to the network. The television shows he packaged included The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and The Bobby Darin Show. Howard West is partnered with George Shapiro in the management firm Shapiro/West Productions.
David Yarnell became a lawyer, practiced law for two years, hated it, and ultimately landed a job at radio station WNEW and loved it. He became program director of Channel 5 in New York, and then vice president of RKO General, where he formed a network of independent television stations carrying sports events emanating from Madison Square Garden. Mr. Yarnell later became an independent producer of television shows and documentaries. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Toni Howard, a talent agent for ICM.
In June of 2010, while a senior at Bronx High School of Science, Erik Zeidler won the American Museum of Natural History Young Naturalist Award for his survey of the snapping turtle population of the Bronx. After leaving the University of Kansas, Mr. Zeidler formed his own educational company, New York World, which brings exotic animals to schools, camps, fairs, and special events. His mission is to provide creative and innovative ways of exposing the urban children of New York City to nature.