Jon Amsterdam, Program Coordinator, Science Leadership Academy (Co-Chair): Jon currently serves as Program Coordinator at the nationally recognized Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, following a twenty-five year career in youth leadership and citizenship development work. Jon has founded and directed a number of nationally recognized youth community service programs, assisted in the creation of the Americorps national service program, and developed the design of many popular project based learning initiatives across the country. As a trained lawyer, he has taught high school Civics and other Law-Related Education curricula, as well as instructed Education courses at Temple University. Before joining the design and launch team for Science Leadership Academy in 2006, Jon managed a University of Pennsylvania-sponsored multicultural civic engagement program bringing together students from eighty of Philadelphia's city and suburban high schools for collaborative public problem solving experiences.
Robert W. Cort, Film Producer & Owner, Robert Cort Productions (Co-Chair): Robert W. Cort has achieved a remarkable record of success as a film producer in the entertainment industry. Since 1985 he has produced forty-eight feature films, which have achieved enormous popularity with movie-going audiences, grossing over 2.5 billion dollars in worldwide box office. These include Outrageous Fortune, Three Men and a Baby, Three Men and A Little Lady, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Cocktail, Class Action, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, The Cutting Edge, Terminal Velocity, Operation Dumbo Drop, Bird on a Wire, Jumanji, Runaway Bride, Mr. Holland’s Opus and Save the Last Dance. In 2007 Cort went global, producing his first foreign language film in Germany. Cort’s HBO film, Something the Lord Made, became one of the most honored movies in television’s history, winning three Emmys, including the 2004 Outstanding Film Made for Television, the American Film Institute Award, the Director’s and Writer’s Guild Awards, the Christopher, NAACP Image Award and the prestigious Peabody Award. His six other television films have also won multiple honors, including the 1991 Emmy for Best Children’s Programming for A Mother’s Courage: The Mary Thomas Story.
Cort entered the motion picture industry in 1976 as vice president of advertising, publicity and promotion for Columbia Pictures. In 1980, he became executive vice president of marketing for Twentieth Century-Fox. As marketing chief, Cort planned and supervised the campaigns of such films as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Midnight Express, The China Syndrome, All That Jazz, The Empire Strikes Back, and Nine to Five. He then served as executive vice president of production at Fox, where he oversaw the making of Romancing the Stone, Bachelor Party and Revenge of the Nerds. For the next eleven years, Cort was a partner and president of Interscope Communications, which was sold to Polygram in 1992. From 1996 to 2001, Cort was the managing partner of The Cort/Madden Company, a production unit with close ties to Paramount Pictures. He currently operates Robert Cort Productions, an independent production company.
Prior to the entertainment industry, Cort was a management consultant for McKinsey & Company. He also served a two-year assignment in the Central Intelligence Agency. In 2003 Random House published Cort’s novel, ACTION!, which garnered outstanding critical reviews and became a bestseller. His articles and essays have been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and several websites. In 2006 Cort joined the faculty of the American Film Institute as a professor in the production department. He received his BA, magna cum laude, and MA degrees in history from the University of Pennsylvania, where Cort was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He later earned an MBA from the Wharton School, graduating at the top of his business school class. Cort and literary manager Rosalie Swedlin, his wife of twenty-four years, live in Beverly Hills.
Russ Finkelstein: Russ Finkelstein has developed and supported programs that aid people in locating their purpose and support them in times of transition.
He served for the past fifteen years as the Associate Director of Idealist.org an international nonprofit that helps move individuals from good intentions to action. Russ has developed trainings, programs and resources that seek to inform individuals and those who counsel them about the opportunities available in public service.
The programs Russ launched included national slates of fairs dedicated to nonprofit careers, global volunteering and public service graduate education. His team released the free online Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers for First Time Job Seekers and Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Careers for Sector Switchers. Penguin recently published The Idealist.org Handbook to Building a Better World: How to Turn Your Good Intentions into Actions That Make a Difference. This work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post and Marketplace. Individual programs have been recognized by the National Association of Careers and Employers (NACE) and the National Association of Graduate Admissions Professionals (NAGAP) for their innovation and service to the field.
Russ has a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) in Education and Nonprofit Management from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and his B.A. is from Connecticut College. He previously served as program director for the Higher Achievement Program, an educational and social enrichment program for inner city children in Washington, DC. Russ also serves on the boards of Next Generation Leadership Forum and Talent Initiative. In 2007 he was named a Selah Fellow.
Bethany Rubin Henderson, Founder & Executive Director, City Hall Fellows: Bethany was inspired to launch City Hall Fellows after working for the City of New York right out of college. As a Special Assistant to the Commissioner of New York City's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (through the New York City Urban Fellows program), Bethany played an integral role in developing New York's first city-wide information technology strategy – ensuring that City agencies effectively utilized Internet technology to provide services to and communicate with local residents and businesses. That experience opened Bethany’s eyes to the importance of a capable local government – not just for providing routine services, but also for effecting social change.
While Bethany really enjoyed working for New York City, she often wished she could have participated in a similar program in her native Louisiana, so that she could have created social change in a community near and dear to her heart. Throughout Harvard Law School and developing a successful career as a business litigator at a top-tier international law firm, Bethany developed a vision for empowering a new generation of public leaders – a national service corps of recent college graduates who spend a year serving in and learning about how to create social change through local government in their own home communities. In March 2007, Bethany founded City Hall Fellows to make this vision a reality.
Bethany holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and is a summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science. Bethany has published numerous articles in national law and civic journals. For her work starting City Hall Fellows, in 2009 Bethany received an Echoing Green Fellowship - an award for innovative new social entrepreneurs who have devised high-impact solutions addressing the root causes of social problems.
Elaine Lasnik-Broida, Founder & President, Lasnik-Broida Consulting: Ms. Lasnik-Broida brings over 25 years of compensation and performance management experience to serve client needs. She has facilitated the design and implementation of innovative programs that reinforce client’s business strategies, priorities and values. Her client base includes organizations that emphasize investment in their people assets.
Ms. Lasnik-Broida has conducted numerous seminars in compensation strategy development, total compensation management, compensation trends and issues and performance management. She co-founded the Foundation Administrators of California, a networking group of major foundations. Additionally, she conceived of a comprehensive total compensation survey focused on the foundation sector that is nationally recognized as a valued resource by organization leaders.
Prior to consulting, Ms. Lasnik-Broida was employed by Hughes Aircraft Company and Dun & Bradstreet, Inc., where she held a variety of positions in human resources management and business operations. Her responsibilities included field office, corporate and special assignments.
Ms. Lasnik-Broida holds an M.B.A. degree in Management from the University of Southern California and a Professional Designation in Personnel Management from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is an active member of WorldatWork and The Employers Group. Ms. Lasnik-Broida is a Director Emeritus on the Board of Directors for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, and is currently on the Executive Advisory Board of the Iris Cantor-UCLA Women’s Health Center and the President’s Council of the National Breast Cancer Coalition. In addition, she is an active supporter and contributor to various charitable organizations.
Al Schneider, Chairman & Co-Founder, Pasadena Angels: Al Schneider is an active angel investor, experienced board member on both non-profit and for-profit boards, and mentor to early stage companies. He was a co-founder in 2000, served as a board member and Vice Chairman, and is currently Chairman of Pasadena Angels, a 100 member 501(c)(6) non-profit focused on providing a forum for entrepreneurs to present their business plans, receive counsel and, potentially, engage with interested accredited investors.
He has also been active for over ten years in the 250 member Tech Coast Angels, also a 501 (c) (6) non-profit. He is the immediate Past President (in 2008-2009) of its 85 member Los Angeles network; and served on its Board of Governors from 2006-2009. Since their inception, these two angel organizations have assisted over 200 companies raise over $125 million in angel funding and well over $1 billion in follow on funding from venture capital funds and strategic partners.
In a different kind of non-profit role, Al was a board member during the 2004-2009 period, and Chairman in 2006-2007, of Entretech, a local 501 (c) (3) non-profit focused on empowering entrepreneurs to build their businesses by better accessing educational, networking and funding resources via conferences, strategic partnering programs and sponsoring the PWC/Entretech Entrepreneurship Award.
In his work with young for-profit companies, Al currently serves as Chairman of H2Scan, a leader in hydrogen sensing products for area monitoring and process control. In recent years he has also served on the boards of Pictage, a complete digital proofing, marketing and production solution for professional photographers acquired by an affiliate of Apax Partners and Unified Dispatch, a software company serving the ground transportation industry.
Prior to focusing on early stage investments in Southern California, most of his career was spent in the real estate and healthcare property investment, finance and development industries. He was Vice President of the B.F. Saul Company, a diversified real estate organization which then advised the public REIT now known as Saul Centers (NYSE-BFS). Later, he was the COO of The Canterbury Group, a private real estate company which developed rental apartments, condominiums, and other residential and healthcare properties, and President of the non-profit Northern Virginia Apartment Association. His earliest private equity investments outside the real estate field, in the mid 1990's, included Clifton Mining (NASDAQ-CFTN). Al has a B.A, M.A. and M.B.A. from Harvard.
Tedde Tsang, Project Manager in International Business Development, New York City Economic Development Corporation: Tedde was a member of the 2008-2009 inaugural class of City Hall Fellows in San Francisco, where he helped to improve the reliability of the City’s public transportation system as part of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Transit Effectiveness Project. After completing his Fellowship, Tedde moved on to a brief stint in federal public policy evaluation at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. before returning to city government in his current role. Tedde graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University in 2008 with a degree in East Asian Studies, for which he received departmental honors.