ROOSEVELT HOUSE - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Communications Electronic Media Manager
- Media
Job Titles:
- Assistant to Harold Holzer
Job Titles:
- JFEW Eleanor Roosevelt Scholars Program Coordinator
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.
Job Titles:
- Program Coordinator
- Program Administration
- Program Coordinator, Public Policy Program
Job Titles:
- Program Associate, Human Rights Program
Job Titles:
- Eleanor Roosevelt Distinguished Leader in Residence
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.
Job Titles:
- Production Coordinator ( AV )
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Individual Rights
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.
Job Titles:
- Member of the New York Times Editorial Board and Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice
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.
Job Titles:
- Program Director
- Director, Public Policy Program
- Distinguished Lecturer and Director
- Member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc
Dr. Basil Smikle Jr. is a Distinguished Lecturer and Director of the Public Policy Program and the Roosevelt House Institute for Public Policy at Hunter College. With over 15 years in higher education and 25 years of a career dedicated to public service, Basil regularly shares insights on electoral politics, governance, and public policy on national media outlets such as MSNBC, CNN, and Bloomberg TV. Basil holds a PhD in Politics and Education and an MPA from Columbia University, and received a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University.
In the midst of racial unrest and a health care crisis brought on by the pandemic, Basil has become a leading voice on criminal justice reform, improved ballot access and against voter suppression. He moderated or joined discussions with national civil rights leaders, Members of Congress and local advocates to educate the public about opportunities to mobilize around the most pressing issues of the day. A direct result of his leadership on these issues, Basil helped design and co-teach a class at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs with New York State Attorney General Tish James entitled Rethinking Policing for the 21 st Century.
From 2017-2019, Basil served as the Distinguished Lecturer of Politics and Public Policy at the City University of New York's School of Labor and Urban Studies. Prior to that, he was appointed by former Governor David Paterson to serve as the Executive Director of the New York State Democratic Party where he was the "second highest ranking Democrat" in the State. Basil worked closely with elected officials and community leaders to manage electoral and fundraising strategies for the State. He recruited candidates for political office and worked closely with the Democratic National Committee to create grassroots mobilization programs and act as a Party surrogate during the 2016 cycle. Under Basil's leadership, Democrats flipped county legislatures, and county-wide seats - laying the foundation for returning the State Senate to full Democratic control in 2018 and flipping three Congressional seats. He received awards from the Governor and from the New York State Comptroller for his commitment to public service and education equity.
Basil was a senior aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton on her Senate staff where he advised Senator Clinton on state-wide policy and politics. His work and collaboration had a substantial impact on the State of New York….Mrs. Clinton called Basil a "key advisor and tremendous public servant…who makes sure all voices are heard"
A life-long New Yorker and raised in the Bronx by Jamaican immigrants, he is inspired by his father, a retired textile worker, and mother, a long-time public school special education teacher.
Basil is a proud member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., Prince Hall Free and Accepted Masons, and 100 Black Men of New York where he helped start the Eagle Academy in the Bronx which has grown to 6 schools in New York and New Jersey. He is also a founding Board Member of the Harlem Hebrew Academy Charter School and sits on the Board of the New York City Charter School Center, The Association to Better Children, and Pa'lante Harlem, a tenant and affordable housing advocacy organization.
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.
Job Titles:
- Eleanor Roosevelt Distinguished Leader in Residence
Job Titles:
- Director, Hunter College LGBTQ Policy Center
- Political Science
Job Titles:
- Principal & Senior Financial Advisor at Shufro Rose
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.
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.
Job Titles:
- Program Assistant, Human Rights Program
Job Titles:
- Professor Emeritus of Economics at Hunter College
Howard Chernick is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is a research affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the Univ. of Wisconsin, a board member of Citizens for Tax Justice, and a past member of the board of the National Tax Association. Research interests include fiscal federalism, urban public finance, anti-poverty policy, and tobacco taxation. He is the editor of "Resilient City," a book published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 2005 assessing the economic costs of the 9/11 attacks on New York City. In addition to cities in the United States, including his hometown of NYC, Professor Chernick has studied the finances of cities around the world, including Montreal, Stockholm, and Kolkata, India.
Howard Chernick is actively involved in public policy in New York. He has testified before several NYC tax commissions, and served as a consultant to the City of New York Independent Budget Office, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Lecturer and Rita E. Hauser Director, Human Rights Program
- Ex Officio
Jessica Neuwirth is an international women's rights lawyer and activist. She is one of the founders of Equality Now, an international women's rights organization established in 1992, and the founder and Director of Donor Direct Action, an offshoot project now hosted by the Sisterhood is Global Institute to support women's rights organizations around the world. She is also a founder and Co-President of the new ERA Coalition, mobilizing a renewed effort to get the Equal Rights Amendment into the United States Constitution. To aid this effort, she has also written a book Equal Means Equal, Why the Time for the ERA is Now.
Jessica holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in History from Yale University. She has worked for the human rights organization Amnesty International, for the Wall Street law firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, and for the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs, as well as the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She served as a special consultant on sexual violence to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for its landmark Akayesu judgment holding that rape is a form of genocide, and again worked for the Rwanda Tribunal on the Media judgment holding print and radio media accountable for their role in the Rwandan genocide. More recently she directed the legal team that drafted the judgment of the Special Court for Sierra Leone convicting former Liberian President Charles Taylor of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a guest lecturer, Jessica has taught international women's rights at Harvard Law School.
Jessica is the recipient of the following honors and awards:
Susan B. Anthony Award, National Organization for Women, New York City Chapter, 1997
Special Citation, Advice Desk for Abused Women, Durban, South Africa, 2000
Ms. Women of the Year, 2003
Visionary Ending Violence Award, Harvard Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, 2005
Edith I. Spivack Award, New York County Lawyers' Association, 2009
New York Moves Power Women of the Year, 2015
Civic Spirit Award, Women's City Club, 2016
Women's eNews - 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, 2017
Job Titles:
- Program Manager, Human Rights Program
Job Titles:
- Independent Director of Invesco Mutual Funds
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.
Job Titles:
- Director
- Member of the Advisory Board
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.
Harold Holzer is the Jonathan F. Fanton Director of The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College in New York City, a post he assumed in 2015 after 23 years as senior vice president of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also served for six years as chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, and the previous 10 years as co-chair of the U. S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, appointed by President Bill Clinton. In 2008, Holzer was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush.
Holzer is the author, co-author, or editor of 55 books on Lincoln and the Civil War era. His 2014 Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion won the Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize from the Columbia University School of Journalism, and the Goldsmith Prize from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy and Harvard University's Kennedy School.
His most recent book is Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration (Dutton, 2024). He also edited Hunter 150, The official publication marking the college's sesquicentennial in 2020.
Holzer's 2012 book, Lincoln: How Abraham Lincoln Ended Slavery in America, was the official young adult companion book to the Steven Spielberg film Lincoln, for which Holzer served as script consultant. He also authored The Civil War in 50 Objects, which traces the conflict through the collections of the New-York Historical Society, where he served for three years as the Roger Hertog Fellow.
In addition, Holzer has written some 650 articles and reviews for both popular magazines and scholarly journals, published 17 monographs, and contributed chapters or prefaces to 67 additional volumes. Among his many other awards are a second-place Lincoln Prize in 2005 for Lincoln at Cooper Union, and book prizes from the Freedom Foundation, the Manuscript Society of America, the New York State Archives, the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, the Civil War Round Table of New York, and the Illinois State Historical Society, along with lifetime achievement awards from the Lincoln Groups of New York, Washington, Peekskill, Kansas City, and Detroit; as well as honorary degrees from nine colleges and universities. Holzer is a member of many history boards and advisory committees, and for 20 years has served as vice chairman of The Lincoln Forum. He is now a Trustee of The Met.
Holzer lectures throughout the nation. One of his programs, "Lincoln Seen and Heard," with actor Sam Waterston, has been staged and telecast from such venues as the White House, the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, the Bill Clinton Presidential Library, the Library of Congress, and Ford's Theatre. Holzer also appears frequently on C-SPAN and the History Channel, has served as an on-air commentator on CBS, PBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, and the BBC, and has created and performed Lincoln programs onstage with such actors as F. Murray Abraham, Alex Baldwin, Annette Benning, Kathleen Chalfant, Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, Stephen Lang, Norm Lewis, Liam Neeson, Chris Noth, Anna Deavere Smith, Fritz Weaver, and Dianne Wiest.
Before joining the Met in 1992, Holzer spent his early career as a journalist, a campaign and Congressional press secretary for Rep. Bella Abzug, an aide to New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and as spokesman for New York's PBS station, WNET. He and his wife Edith live in New York City and have two grown daughters and two grandsons.
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.
Job Titles:
- Professor at Columbia University School of International
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.
Job Titles:
- Curator of Public Programming
Job Titles:
- Program Administrator, Public Policy Program
Job Titles:
- Managing Partner at Wolfson Partners LLC
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.
Job Titles:
- IT Assistant and AV Multimedia Analyst
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund
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.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Advisory Board
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.
Job Titles:
- Geography and Environmental Science
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Basic Income Canada Network, a Retired Federal Public Servant and Former Executive Director of the National Council of Welfare.
- Founding Member of the Basic Income Canada Network
Sheila Regehr is a founding member of the Basic Income Canada Network, and its Chairperson since 2014. She is also a former Executive Director of the National Council of Welfare, an independent advisory body to the federal government that published the only comparative reports available on Canada's 13 different social assistance systems, comprehensive poverty profiles, and analytic reports focused on solutions. It consulted across the country with governments and civil society from 2006 to 2012 as provinces, territories and municipalities were developing and undertaking poverty reduction strategies. Its last and most in-demand report was The Dollars and Sense of Solving Poverty.
Sheila's 29-year career in the federal public service also spanned front-line work, policy analysis and development and senior management. She was a Canadian negotiator at several United Nations world conferences on gender equality and social development, and chaired UN negotiations on poverty and on unpaid work. Her areas of policy expertise include income security and taxation, such as child tax benefits, the tax treatment of child support, the development of Economic Gender Equality Indicators in collaboration with Statistics Canada, maternity/parental benefits, pensions and social assistance. Sheila's insight also comes from experiencing poverty herself as a young parent.
Job Titles:
- Professor at Columbia University
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.
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.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and President of Homework Helpers, Inc
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.