Trustees and Advisers
The Trustees and an active executive committee lead the Rubin Museum of ARt governance process. The museum is dedicated to developing best practices in governance and social responsibility. The Board participates in strategic planning, development initiatives, and oversight of the programmatic and collection activities of the institution, in partnership with the professional staff.
Rubin Museum Advisers, appointed by the Trustees, assist the Board and staff with specific tasks.
Ravi Akhoury
Ravi Akhoury recently retired as Chairman and CEO of MacKay Shields, a multi-product investment management firm. He has been in the investment management business since 1973. Mr. Akhoury is a member of the Executive Management Committee of New York Life Insurance Company and a director of Max/New York Life India. He is a trustee of the American India Foundation and a former board member of the Bharti Telecom and Thompson Press in India. Mr. Akhoury graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology with a BS in Engineering and obtained an MS in Quantitative Methods from SUNY at Stony Brook.
Robert M. Baylis
As former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Credit Suisse First Boston (Pacific), Inc., Robert Baylis was involved in investment management, mergers and acquisitions activities around the world, and was responsible for strategic planning and corporate investments. He lived in Hong Kong for several years and traveled extensively in the Tibetan and Himalayan regions. Mr. Baylis retired in 1996. He is Chairman of the Board of Gildan Activewear, Inc., and is a director on the boards of New York Life Insurance Company, and Host Hotels & Resorts, Inc. He is also an overseer of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, and a Trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Edward Bergman
Edward Bergman is Founder and President of Innovative Development Services Inc. (IDS), a full-service consulting company serving international clients in New York and around the world who work to effect social change. Since 2006 Mr. Bergman has served as the Executive Director of the New York-headquartered Africa Travel Association (ATA), the premier international travel industry trade association promoting tourism to the African continent and intra-Africa travel and partnership founded in 1975 and currently working in collaboration with the African Union Commission (AUC). He co-founded and is President of Miracle Corners of the World (MCW), a non-profit organization devoted to empowering youth, primarily through programs of leadership training, community center development and oral healthcare outreach, with a special focus on Africa. Mr. Bergman is a part-time faculty member in the Department of Hospitality Management at CUNY's New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn. He also lectures on Social Entrepreneurship at Stony Brook University. Mr. Bergman is Co-CEO of E & E Grill House, a food & beverage company with its first restaurant located in Times Square. He received his Masters from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a major in Social Entrepreneurship and his Bachelors in Hotel and Tourism Management from NYU's Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management, where he was a Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholar. Mr. Bergman serves on the board of directors of several international organizations in the non-profit, education and travel and trade sectors, the Museum for African Art, Shared Interest and the Synergos Institute. He also serves on the advisory boards of the International Crisis Group, the NYU Africa House, NYU SCPS Center for Global Studies and NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Studies.
Kimberly Ferrari
Kimberly Ferrari is an artist, and the co-founder of the Ferrari Foundation for Social Change. With 30 years of experience in strategic communications, Ms. Ferrari's work has focused on shifting organizational paradigms from traditional mass communications, to the cultivation of one-to-one, user-centered experiences. Prior to her retirement in 2008, Ms. Ferrari held positions as founder of the CLIO award-winning design firm Youngblood, Sweat & Tears, executive creative director with Interpublic Group agency Jack Morton Worldwide, and SVP of Strategic Innovation at MS&L, a Publicis agency. Her firm was a pioneer in leading global brands like Coca-Cola, The Ritz Carlton Hotel Companies, Pfizer, CNN, and Disney in fostering deeper relationships with their audiences through experiential retail, museum and digital environments. Over the last decade, Ms. Ferrari has been exploring the possibilities of optimal human experience through art making and art presentation. She has worked with artists and social change organizations, like CARE, Usher and Jane Fonda, to ignite activism and advocacy through visual and performing arts that envision viable, flourishing futures for women and girls. Ms. Ferrari earned her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art.
Eva Haller
Eva Haller is the Co-founder of the Campaign Communications Institute of America (CCI), a worldwide marketing agency in Manhattan with a client base of Fortune 100 companies. Prior to this, Haller had been a therapist and researcher, working with special-needs children in New York City and conducting research on adoption practices in England and the United States. Since 1984 she has actively participated in boards of organizations as diverse as El Pilar Archaeological Reserve (Belize), Oceans Alert (New York, NY), Global Tribe Advisory Board (Los Angeles, CA), Aidmatrix (Dallas, Texas); The Jane Goodall Institute (Silver Spring, MD), Women for Women International (Washington, DC), The Medici Archive Project (New York, New York; Florence, Italy), Free the Children (New York, NY), Counterpart International (Washington, DC), The Arts Fund of Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA); Center for Defense Information (Washington, DC), and the Foundation for University of California Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA).
Peter Hutchings
As former Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Guardian Life, the fourth-largest mutual life insurance company in the United States, Peter Hutchings supervised all finance functions, excluding investments, and served on the boards of several subsidiaries. Prior to his work at Guardian, Mr. Hutchings was a partner of Kwasha Lipton, an independent employee benefit consulting firm, as well as Chief Financial Officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Greater New York. He is currently a member of the boards of the Downtown Alliance, Visiting Nurse Service of New York and the Children's Orchestra Society. Mr. Hutchings and his wife Martha are active in the arts.
Vikas Kapoor
Vikas Kapoor is President and CEO of iQor, a premier provider of call center services, employing more than 8,000 employees in the US, Canada, the UK, India and the Philippines. Prior to iQor, Vikas was President and CEO of Delano Technology, a public software company, and was President and CEO of Walker Digital, an incubator of internet businesses, including priceline.com. Prior to that, he co-founded Mitchell Madison Group, a management consulting firm. He began his career with McKinsey & Co. Mr. Kapoor earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School, an MA in Philosophy from Harvard University, and a BA from Princeton University. He is a Board Member of Cooper Union, a member of the Young Presidents' Organization, and a member of Philippine President Gloria Arroyo's International Board of Advisors. He has a keen interest in architecture, landscape design and furniture making.
Michael J. McCormick
Michael J. McCormick is a Sea Captain, Master of the M. V. President Jackson. He is a graduate of the United States Merchant Marine Academy. Mr. McCormick has served as a member of the Board of Directors of Tibet House, since 1987, its inaugural year. He has been a consultant for various exhibitions, including the exhibition Sacred Visions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the exhibition Divine Presence at La Caixa in Barcelona. Mr. McCormick has a collection of eleventh–fifteenth-century Tibetan paintings that he has loaned to exhibitions at a number of major museums.
David R. Nalin
Dr. David R. Nalin served as Director, Vaccine Scientific Affairs, Merck Vaccine Division, Merck & Co., Inc. from 1997 to 2002. Prior to assuming that position, Dr. Nalin was Director, Clinical Research, Vaccine Infectious Diseases Department, Merck Research Laboratories (MRL) and Director, Clinical Research International, MRL. Dr. Nalin served in the United States Public Health Service from 1970 to 1980, attaining the rank of Senior Surgeon with service in Dhaka, Bangladesh as a Research Associate at the Office of International Research, NIH and later for the Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Research. Dr. Nalin was also Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins and Associate Professor of International Medicine and Clinical Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Maryland and Director of the latter's Pakistan Medical Research Center in Lahore, Pakistan. Dr. Nalin led the team which first demonstrated the effect of oral glucose-electrolyte solution maintenance therapy in reducing intravenous fluid needs by 80% in severe cholera, and published numerous pioneering studies. He has authored more than 100 publications and over 200 letters, reviews, book chapters, and abstracts. He has been awarded numerous professional and academic honors which recognized his pivotal work in the treatment of cholera. While in South Asia, Dr. Nalin became captivated with local cultures. Realizing ancient sculptures were being scrapped for their metal, his extensive humanitarian efforts in the medical field were soon coupled with a commitment to preserve the visual arts of the region. Dr. Nalin's substantial art collection includes works from India and Bangladesh with others surrounding regions such as Tibet, Nepal, and China. Dr. Nalin earned his AB in zoology from Cornell University and his MD from Albany Medical College, Union University.
Mark A. Norell
Mark A. Norell specializes in research on the evolutionary relationship between small meat-eating dinosaurs and present-day birds. He is one of the team leaders of the joint American Museum of Natural History/Mongolian Academy of Sciences expedition to the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, which was launched in 1990 and is now in its sixteenth year. With the discovery of new, extraordinarily well-preserved fossils in Mongolia, Dr. Norell and the team have generated new ideas about bird origins and the groups of dinosaurs to which modern birds are most closely related. Dr. Norell was one of the Gobi Desert Expedition team members who, in 1993, discovered Ukhaa Tolgod, the world's richest vertebrate fossil site dating from the Cretaceous. Among Dr. Norell's discoveries are the first embryo of a meat-eating dinosaur ever uncovered, the primitive avialian Mononykus, and an Oviraptor found nesting on a brood of eggs. Dr. Norell was also part of the team of scientists who, in 1998, announced the discovery in northeastern China of two 120-million-year-old dinosaur species, both of which show unequivocal evidence of true feathers. Dr. Norell came to the American Museum of Natural History in 1989 from Yale University, where he was a lecturer in the Department of Biology. He earned his Ph.D. in biology from Yale in 1988.
David Pritzker
David Pritzker has been associated with Himalayan Art Resources, www.himalayanart.org since late spring of 2008. In the summer of 2008 he helped to curate an exhibition in Aspen, Colorado, in honor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and participated in seminars and workshops on Tibetan cultural preservation. Prior to this, he was a Curator at the Rubin Museum of Art where he organized and curated a number of shows including, Red Black and Gold, Arhats, From the Land of the Gods: Art of the Kathmandu Valley, and BIG. He received his B.S. from Stanford University with a major in History and a minor in International Relations. Mr. Pritzker has a unique experience with the culture and art of the Himalayas, having grown up around one of the most important collections of Himalayan art in the world. He spent much of his childhood exploring the Kathmandu Valley and the entire Himalayan range with his family. Mr. Pritzker continues to visit Tibet in collaboration with China's Cultural Bureau to conduct further research, and exploration, of the early Tibetan Buddhist art history and archeology.
Basha Frost Rubin
Basha Frost Rubin graduated from Yale Law School in 2010 and Yale College with a degree in Political Science in 2007. At Yale, Ms. Rubin participated in the National Litigation Project, assisting Guantanamo detainees, and the Criminal Defense Clinic, working on state and federal criminal defense cases. She has worked for the National Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem. Ms. Rubin is currently a lawyer in New York City.
Donald Rubin
Founder of MultiPlan, Inc., a major general service PPO health provider, Donald Rubin and his wife Shelley Rubin founded the Rubin Museum of Art. Mr. Rubin serves as Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Rubin Museum of Art. Donald Rubin and Shelley Rubin started collecting Himalayan art in the early 1980s and amassed a large and significant collection that became the core of the museum's holdings. Mr. Rubin also developed the Himalayan Art Resources, www.himalayanart.org, to virtually exhibit and catalog Himalayan and Tibetan art from collections around the world with the long-term goal of creating a comprehensive and definitive archive. He initiated The Labor Arts Project, www.laborarts.org to gather, identify, and display examples of the cultural and artistic history of working people, and to celebrate the trade union movement's contributions to that history. Mr. Rubin is a member of the Global Philanthropists Circle (GPC) and the Wealth and Giving Forum.
Shelley F. Rubin
Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Rubin Museum of Art, Shelley Rubin brought her passion for Himalayan art to the joint decision with her husband Donald Rubin to build a Museum dedicated to its preservation, study, and enjoyment. After completing her Masters of Public Administration in the field of mental health, Ms. Rubin worked with pioneers at NY Medical College and Montefiore Hospital using computers to research psychoactive drugs and to create health and data analysis systems. This background informed her early years, as co-chair of MultiPlan, Inc., the health care provider company she founded with her husband. Her aesthetic sense and organizational skills have informed all aspects of the Museum's renovation, design, and program development. Ms. Rubin is active in many organizations related to health, civil rights and cultural preservation. Ms. Rubin is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Educational Broadcasting Corporation (Thirteen/WNET, WLIW21, HD, Kids, World, and Create), the largest producer of cultural and arts programming in America. She also serves on the Board of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC). Ms. Rubin recently rotated off the Board of Trustees of the Interfaith Center of New York. She is a member of the Global Philanthropists Circle (GPC) and the Wealth and Giving Forum.
Eric Schoenberg
Eric Schoenberg currently teaches behavioral economics at Columbia Business School, where his research focuses on the psychology of money, with particular emphasis on intergenerational wealth transfers and behavior in financial markets. Previously, he was Managing Director and Chief Knowledge Officer of Broadview International, a boutique investment bank offering merger and acquisition advisory services to Information Technology companies. Before that, he served as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Department of State. He holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University, an MBA from the Wharton School, where he was a Palmer Scholar, an MSE in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and an AB in Biology from Harvard. He is an Overseer of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology and Chairman of the Endowment Committee of Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey.
Eileen Caulfield Schwab
Eileen Caulfield Schwab, retired partner at Sidley Austin LLP. Ms. Schwab has lectured and written on numerous domestic and certain international trusts and estates and tax subjects. In addition, Ms. Schwab is an adjunct professor at New York Law School. She is also a trustee and member of the executive committee of Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts; a trustee and chair of the Cooke Center for Learning and Development; a trustee of the Catholic Communal Fund and Chair of the Planning Giving Committee of the Archdiocese of New York. Ms. Schwab is also on the Professional Advisory Committees of Calvary Hospital, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Arts & Design, the New York Public Library, Co-Chair, the Central Park Conservancy and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Ms. Schwab earned a J.D. from Columbia University Law School, and a B.A. from Hunter College.
Stephen Spahn
Stephen Spahn is Chancellor/Headmaster of the Dwight School in New York, and Chancellor of Woodside Park International School in London. Mr. Spahn's passion for Asian and Himalayan arts and cultures has been active for more than four decades, since he worked with Tibetan refugees to recover stolen medical records. He combines his interest in Asian culture with his work as an international educator. Mr. Spahn is the founder of The International School of London, Global Finance Magazine, The Anglo-American International School, and the Institute for Civic Leadership. He is the principal of D.E. Enterprise which publishes Down East Magazine; Fly, Rod, and Reel Magazine, and Shooting Sportsman. He has also been a trustee of several community service organizations including the An Loc Orphanage in Vietnam, Asphalt Green, the Boy Scouts of Manhattan, and Teaching Matters.
Trustees Emeritus and Advisers
William F. Baker Adviser
William F. Baker is an Executive in Residence at Columbia University School of Business, Journalist in Residence at Fordham University and the Claudio Aquaviva Chair at the Graduate School of Education, and President Emeritus of Educational Broadcasting Corporation, parent company of /ThirteenWNET-TV and WLIW-TV21, where he served for 20 years as Chief Executive Officer. Prior to joining EBC, Dr. Baker served a dual role as President of Westinghouse Television Incorporation and Chairman of Group W Satellite Communications, where he oversaw the launch of five cable networks, including the Discovery Channel and the Disney Channel. Dr. Baker is chairman of the National Park System Advisory Board. He also serves on the boards of the Public Broadcasting Service, Rodale Press, Freedom Communication, Inc., The British Academy of Film and Television Arts East Coast, and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum Foundation. Among numerous honors, he has won seven Emmys and two Columbia Dupont Journalism awards, and was named to the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Management Hall of Fame and the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame. In 2008, he was appointed as a senior research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University. Dr. Baker earned his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Case Western Reserve University, and has been recognized with honorary degrees from St. John's University, College of St. Elizabeth, Long Island University, New School University, and Seton Hall University.
Charles C. Bergman Trustee Emeritus and Adviser
Charles Bergman is Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc., a foundation that provides aid to worthy and needy visual artists internationally. Mr. Bergman serves on the Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission of New York City, the Harvard University Art Museum's Overseers' Committee, the Boards of Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, and is Senior Advisor to Foursome Investments Ltd. in London, England. Mr. Bergman was an adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at New York Medical College and served on the Board of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University, the HIV Center Advisory Council at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, and for many years on the Board of Managers of The Silver Hill Foundation, one of the nation's leading private psychiatric hospitals where he was elected an Honorary Member of the Board. Under President Carter, he also served as Special Advisor to the Public Committee on Mental Health.
Robert Jain Trustee Emeritus
A Managing Director of Credit Suisse, based in New York, Robert Jain is the Co-Head of Global Securities within the Investment Banking division. He is a member of the Investment Banking Management Committee and Heads the firm's Global Equity Management Committee. He chairs or is a member of various risk and oversight committees throughout the Bank. Mr. Jain joined the Bank in January 1996 as a Vice President and Head of Index Arbitrage in the Americas and has also worked in the London office. Prior to his current roles, Mr. Jain was Global Head of Proprietary Trading, and prior to that, Head of Arbitrage Strategies, Program Trading and Advanced Execution Services in Equities. He began his career at O'Connor & Associates as an Options Trader. Mr. Jain received his B.A. in Political Science from Cornell University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. As someone deeply devoted to education, he is involved with setting up a Charter School and he and his wife direct substantial support to Hunter High School where he was a student.
Mary Lanier Trustee Emeritus and Advisor
An art historian, Mary Lanier served as the Curator and Director of the Chase Manhattan Bank Art Collection and an art adviser to Philip Morris, Met Life, Becton Dickinson, and others. She began her career as a curatorial assistant at the Museum of Modern Art and was an exhibition coordinator at the American Federation of Arts. She is a student of Tibetan religions and cultures, with a focus on Bon, the indigenous, pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet, and is a Trustee of the Bon Foundation of America.
William Luers Trustee Emeritus and Adviser
William Luers is a professor at Tufts University and Columbia University, and also occupies Sol Linowitz Professorship at Hamilton College. Mr. Luers recently retired as President and CEO of the United Nations Association of the USA (UNA-USA). Mr. Luers continues to work on an Iran project which he has been leading since 2002. Prior to joining UNA-USA in February 1999, Mr. Luers served for 13 years as President of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Prior to his move to New York to become the Museum President in 1986, Mr. Luers had a 31-year career in the Foreign Service. He served as United States Ambassador to Venezuela (1978-1982) and Czechoslovakia (1983-1986) on the eve of its Velvet Revolution. He is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations and other public policy organizations and is the American International Advisor for Japan's prestigious Praemium Imperiale, an annual arts award. Mr. Luers serves on a number of corporate and non-profit boards, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, and the Advisory Board of the National Museum of Natural History in the Smithsonian Institution. He is also the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Center for Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California
The Very Reverend James Parks Morton Trustee Emeritus and Advisor
The Very Reverend James Parks Morton is founder and leader of the Interfaith Center of New York and former Dean of the Cathedral St. John the Divine in New York City. Under Dean Morton's leadership and with his passion and support for arts and culture, the Cathedral came to represent the nation's most outstanding and innovative Episcopal ministry. At The Interfaith Center, The Very Reverend James Parks Morton works with a variety of non-governmental organizations, religious leaders and individuals to foster respect, understanding and appreciation for all faith traditions.
Jonathan F. P. Rose Trustee Emeritus
Jonathan Rose is President of Jonathan Rose & Companies, a group of community and land use, planning and development firms that collaborate with cities, towns and not-for-profit organizations to plan and develop environmentally responsible projects. Jonathan Rose & Companies seek to make cities, towns and villages more vibrant while preserving the land around them focusing on diverse, sustainable development around interconnected transportation nodes, leaving farms and open space undeveloped. Mr. Rose is active in the arts and serves on the boards of Lincoln Center, The American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Academy of Art. Mr. Rose and his wife Diana are founders of the Garrison Institute, a former Capuchin monastery, located in Garrison New York and established to create a center for spiritual retreat, interfaith and ecological dialogue, and a library of contemporary Buddhist teachings.
Daniel Schwartz Trustee Emeritus
Daniel Schwartz is the Executive Director of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Mr. Schwartz is also the founder and Chairman of the Board of Dynamica, Inc., a multi-family office serving some of the world's leading philanthropists. He is a co-creator of Arbinet, the world's largest telecommunications bandwidth exchange (NASDAQ: ARBX). Listed by Black Ink, the American Express Centurion cardholders' magazine, as one the country's most influential philanthropists, Mr. Schwartz is actively engaged in the non-profit community and serves or has served on the boards of Synergos, the GAVI Campaign, the Arcus Foundation, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy and Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary (Kenya), the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO), the Friends of Florence Foundation, Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel, Reboot, and Sing for Hope. He is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, the Council on Foreign Relations, and of the Synergos Global Philanthropist Circle, a non-profit organization that addresses global poverty and social injustice. He served as a co-chair of the Harvard College Schools Committee in NYC. A frequent speaker and author in the areas of effective global philanthropy and entrepreneurship, Schwartz has presented to audiences at The UBS Philanthropy Forum, the World Economic Forum, McKinsey & Co., the Badenweiler Symposium, and at many international YPO conferences. Mr. Schwartz received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Harvard University. He was selected as one of Crain's New York Business' "40 under 40" emerging business leaders, and was named as one of the 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Caron Smith Adviser
Caron Smith, Chief Curator and Deputy Director of RMA from 2004 through 2008, is a graduate in philosophy from Smith College and holds a Ph.D. in Chinese Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU. Her Chinese language and history studies were conducted at Columbia University. Before joining the Rubin Museum of Art, Dr. Smith held curatorial and administrative positions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Asia Society, and the San Diego Museum of Art. She has presented more than 60 exhibitions touching on a broad range of the arts of Asia. Her publications include: with Ellsworth, Itoh, Wu, and Schmitt, Later Chinese Painting (Random House, 3 vols. 1988); with Sung Yu, Ringing Thunder: Tomb Treasures from Ancient China (SDMA 1999); San Diego Mueum of Art : Selected Works (China, Japan, Korea, South Asia), (SDMA,2003); with B.N. Goswamy, Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting from the Edwin Binney 3rd Collection at the San Diego Museum of Art (SDMA, 2005), and again with B.N. Goswamy, I See No Stranger: Sikh Art and Devotion, (RMA 2006). Dr. Smith is currently contributing to a textbook on Asian decorative arts (Bard Graduate School in the Decorative Arts and Yale University (forthcoming) and serves as a consultant to museums and collectors.
