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BrainTrust The Bios of our BrainTrustees
His book The Ecology of Eden (Knopf, Vintage) - an inquiry into humankind's role in nature, real and imagined - has been hailed as "a masterwork" (Toronto Globe and Mail), "a prose epic [of] dazzling wit and impressive learning" (Washington Post), and "a tour de force of magnificent visionary sweep" (Sunday Times, London). His first book, The Recording Angel, a pathbreaking study of the cultural impact of recorded music, has been translated into French, German, and Italian and has just been reissued, in an expanded edition, by Yale University Press. John Rockwell of the New York Times called it "one of the most original series of insights into music and recording to have come along since the invention of recording itself, over a century ago." As a consultant, Evan has worked with Fortune 500 clients to develop new products, concepts, and marketing campaigns. His work with nonprofits has included advising the Doris Duke Foundation on the transformation of the Duke estate into a major center for research and education in landscape, ecology, and the arts. By drawing on the far-flung network of pioneering thinkers he has come to know in the course of his research, he provides BrainTrust with unmatched intellectual firepower. Evan has been a music columnist for The Nation, a synagogue cantor, and a gardener for the New York City parks department. He has lectured and taught seminars at Harvard, Berkeley, the American Museum of Natural History, and many other institutions. He has keynoted at major national conferences and has been featured on radio and television programs both in the U.S. and abroad. A native New Yorker, Evan studied philosophy and ancient Greek at Harvard and Princeton and biology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, an urban planner, and their daughter.
Prior to joining the Center, Elana worked as a freelance journalist, publishing features in the New York Times, Salon, The New Republic, The Nation, NPR and Metropolis, among others. Her piece for the Times about the new phenomenon of "wing women" -- girls who help boys pick up other girls -- is being turned into a UPN TV sitcom, Love Inc., which debuts this fall. In the same period, Elana served as director of communications for Earth Pledge, an urban environmental non-profit group that won a 2004 EPA Environmental Achiever award. Elana is also chair of the Coordinating Council of Downtown for Democracy, an innovative political action committee based in New York City that raised over $300,000 and got 20,000 young people to the polls in 2004 with a blend of creative GOTV events and cutting-edge print and television ads. At Brown University, where Elana graduated with honors and a joint degree in Political Science and Modern Culture and Media in 2001, she sat on the Creative Arts Council Board and the University Finance Board, edited the independent Brown/RISD weekly paper and produced a radio show on WBSR. In her spare time, she salvages bicycles, cooks turkey bacon, and reads books about the South.
In 1985, Booth launched his business career by founding Alert Publishing. Collecting and synthesizing research on the lifestyles and trends of the American people, the flagship newsletter Research Alert quickly became the largest in its field. The company grew dramatically, adding three more newsletters as well as reports and books, of which Booth himself wrote three: Future Vision: The 189 Most Important Trends for the 1990s; Attracting the Affluent: America's First Guide to the Emerging Ultimate Market; and The Lifestyle Odyssey: The Factual Story Behind the Changes Touching Our Lives. He became a major figure in trend analysis, interviewed often in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and appearing on NBC News, Sunday Today, CNN, and his own a syndicated program on the Business Radio Network. In 1992, he sold Alert Publishing in order to devote his time to education through the arts. As a member of the faculty of The Juilliard School, Booth co-designed and taught the Arts and Education program. Now Artistic Director of the new Mentor Program at Juilliard, he is on the faculty of The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center Institute, and Tanglewood and holds one of six chairs on The College Board's National Arts Advisory Board. Founding editor of the new quarterly Teaching Artist Journal, Booth lectures widely, leads workshops, and consults with businesses, government agencies, and arts organizations, including (at present) seven symphony orchestras. His first book on the arts, The Everyday Work of Art (Sourcebooks, 1997), won two publishing industry awards, as well as the Broadway Theatre Institute's 1997 Award of Excellence. A descendent of Edwin and John Wilkes Booth, he lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Le Clanché du Rand, an actress, playwright, and psychotherapist.
For 20 years Bernstein headed an international research collaboration that performed the first Quantum Teleportation, first effective quantum cryptography and first Dense Coding experiments. His newest ideas on superDense teleportation combine aspects of dense coding and of quantum teleportation. Herb's first book, New Ways of Knowing, co-authored with Marcus Raskin, pointed the way beyond the myth of value-free knowledge; his latest book, Muddling Through, argues for integrating humanistic studies into much more self-aware sciences to better serve society in the third millennium. As president of the Institute for Science and Interdisciplinary Studies (ISIS) he has overseen practical applications of these ideas, ranging from cleaning up military nuclear and toxic pollution in the US to preserving indigenous rights and culture in the Amazon. As a teacher Bernstein has innovated courses for majors and non-majors alike. As a consultant he's worked on energy policy, appropriate technology, enterprise development and innovation for such organizations as the World Bank, AAAS, federal and state energy agencies, the NSF, the Government of American Samoa and the President's science adviser. His private clients have included Oak Ridge National Laboratory, MIT and the former executive Vice President of Exxon. A Fellow of the American Physical Society Herb is a former Kellogg National Leadership fellow and postdoctoral member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He holds one US patent and has another pending. He lives in Amherst with his wife, an artist; they have two adult daughters.
Her works include scooping the darkness empty, presented by the Public Theater in December 2004; the doll plays, produced by Atlanta's Actor's Express Theater; the musicals Mermaid and Sunday, written in collaboration with composer Bruce Monroe and performed at the Public Theater's New Work Now festival; and Aunt Aida's Hand and Stained, produced for National Public Radio in collaboration with writer-director Lisa Jones. For the stage adaptation of Stained, produced by Hartford's Company One, Rogers was honored with a Bessie Award from Dance Theater Workshop. As a film actress, Rogers has been featured in Spike Lee's School Daze, Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, and Shu Lea Cheang's Fresh Kill. As a musician, she has performed and recorded with Vernon Reid, Elliot Sharp, and the Band of Susans and appears on the compilation Live at the Knitting Factory I. She has also worked with Urban Bush Women, Robin Holcolmb, Wayne Horvitz, Dave Soldier and Butch Morris. Rogers' performances and installations have been featured at The Kitchen, The Knitting Factory, Central Park's SummerStage, the Spoleto Festival USA, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (with Blue Man Group), and numerous other venues. A native New Yorker and graduate of the Fiorella LaGuardia High School of Music and Arts, Rogers holds an MFA in creative writing from Brown University and an MFA in musical theater and opera writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. She has received grants from (among others) the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Jim Henson Foundation.
In recent years, Singer has created a sculptural floodwall and walkway for the Grand River East Bank in Grand Rapids, MI; a large interior sculpture garden for the Denver International Airport; outdoor gardens for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston; and interior gardens for the IBN, a Dutch environmental research center, that serve as biofilters for air and water recovery. He was selected to design a new urban park on the Chicago River that interprets the history and impacts of canals on the city, reclaims wildlife habitat, and restores a wetland ecosystem. He led a multidisciplinary team that created a master plan for Troja Island Basin in Prague, Czech Republic. He recently completed a design for Trans Gas Energy and Orion Power for sites in the New York City metropolitan area. His design for the largest power facility in New England is currently under construction in Londonderry, NH. Singer's works are part of public collections worldwide, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum, where he has also been featured in a one-person show. He lives in Vermont.
As Dave Soldier, he founded the seminal punk chamber group, the Soldier String Quartet, in 1985, pioneering the use of amplified instruments and a repertoire that erased boundaries between classical and popular music. He founded the punk Delta blues band, the Kropotkins, in 1992, the first orchestra for animals, the Thai Elephant Orchestra of Lampang, in 2000, and the Andalusian band the Spinozas in 2004. Soldier's compositions include The People's Choice Music, based upon poll results of likes and dislikes of the American population, in collaboration with artists Komar & Melamid; A Soldier's Story and Ice-9 Ballads, collaborations with Kurt Vonnegut; works performed by children in Brooklyn and Harlem; and repertoire performed on specially designed instruments by songbirds and pygmy chimpanzees. Soldier has recorded, composed, and arranged for television and film (Sesame Street, I Shot Andy Warhol) and for John Cale, David Byrne, Guided by Voices, Amina Claudine Myers, Lambchop, Leroy Jenkins, Richard Hell, the Ordinaires, and Elliott Sharp. He is co-owner and manager of Mulatta Records.
Prior to founding NHCEI, Carrie gained experience at Yale (in IT for the art department) and at Harvard (in research in the epidemiology department); at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington, DC think tank; as a professor's assistant at George Washington University; as a civil servant of the City of New Haven in environmental health; and as a development staffer with Habitat for Humanity. She has also trained new computer users, taught English to adult learners, and designed physical computer security systems. Carrie has had the privilege of studying group dynamics with both American and Bosnian groups. A practical person with a knack for getting to the heart of the problem, she consistently generates more than her share of outside-the-box ideas. She has studied Russian, Hebrew, Spanish, and ancient Greek and has traveled to ten foreign countries. She holds a B.A. in social science from Hampshire College with a special focus on the economics of American housing.
As a consultant, Rothenberg wrote the now-famous Hannover Principles for William McDonough Architects in 1992. He has spoken on sustainability and business at the Oslo International Business School and at international conferences, and has participated in several invitation-only meetings of the Global Business Network. He co-produced the PBS Series Parliament of Minds, 21 interviews with leading philosophers, which was broadcast nationwide three times in 2000-2001. Rothenberg is also a composer and jazz clarinetist with five CDs in print. His second record, On the Cliffs of the Heart, with percussionist Glen Velez and banjo player Graeme Boone, was released by New Tone Records in the autumn of 1995. John Cage praised their "sense of virtuosity traveling all over the world." Jazziz named it one of the top ten releases of 1995. In 1999 he released Bangalore Wild, a collaboration with the Karnataka College of Percussion in Bangalore, India. In 2000 Before the War was released, a collaboration with natural-sound artist Douglas Quin, from EarthEar Records in Santa Fe. It was cited as "a notable release" in Billboard, and The Guardian in Britain praised it as "genuine 21st century music." Rothenberg is professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He lives in Cold Spring, NY with his wife, an artist, and their son.
Robins has performed at the New York Renaissance Festival as a singer and swordfighter, and was a member of The Knightfighters, a troupe that toured schools and festivals performing Shakespeare-with-mayhem. She holds a BA from Connecticut College in Theatre Studies with a concentration in stage management, which she credits with teaching her the skills to juggle cats, children, and deadlines. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, a recording engineer, and their two daughters.
Gary performs his unique brand of pun-filled standup comedy at association conferences and universities nationwide. His routine features the story of Gary making a film based upon his favorite book-the dictionary. A word travels back in time to try to prevent another word from coming into usage in the future. Arnold Schwarzenegger is… The Terminologist. Gary was named "Punster of the Year 2001" by the International Save the Pun Foundation. He won the talent contest on Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know? radio show broadcast on National Public Radio, and appeared as a guest in June 2003. He is also the Senior Interviewer at the Center for Strategy Research, a market research firm in Boston.
Max Bean Max is one of the few people to have hitchhiked significant distances in post-9/11 America. He has caught rides with angry ex-hippies, militaristic Vietnam vets, college teachers, and truckers. He is interested in almost everything, but particularly computer science (both applied and theoretical), neural computational models, literary theory, play writing, pedagogy, and thinking and talking about what exactly the deal is with his generation.
He has applied his same passion for communication to the non-profit sector, creating outreach video and Public Service Announcements for organizations such as The Children's Defense Fund, the Child Abuse Prevention Program, and the FDNY to help firefighters recover from 9-11. Bottom line: He enjoys the challenge of envisioning client's needs and solving their problems even when it's for a buck eighty and due yesterday. Richard has also enjoyed a year in London and three in Paris. Fluent in French, he has translated history and travel books. In the course of frequent travel throughout Europe, Asia and North America, he has garnered a sense of what makes Americans tick. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, a violist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and their two sons.
Previously, Dr. Fiore was assistant Vice President and Senior Consultant at Nobel Lowndes International, where she managed new business development and actuarial estimates for life, health, and disability employee benefits plans. Her expertise includes compliance, due diligence for mergers and acquisitions, evaluation of outsourcing arrangements, strategic planning, employee focus groups, and communications. Among her clients were hospital and health care delivery organizations such as Long Island Jewish Hospital, and trusteed plans such as Local 1199-Health and Hospital Workers Fund and the New York State Nurses Association. She published several articles and co-authored a book on health insurance funding and design. Dr. Fiore is a member of the board of the Florida Bioethics Network and has served as consultant or committee member for government and institutional ethics committees. She is also co-director of the South Florida Environmental Ethics Consortium, a collaborative regional educational effort linking educational institutions, governmental agencies, nongovernmental agencies, and advocacy groups. Dr. Fiore earned Doctoral and Masters degrees in Philosophy from Georgetown University in Washington, DC and studied at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown. Among her publications are Recognition, Responsibility and Rights: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (2003), "Occupational and Environmental Health: Towards an Environmentally Inclusive Bioethics," and "Caring for Ourselves" in Mother Time: Women, Aging, and Ethics.
Doug is also the creator and host of Team Trivia, a successful brainstorming format he has brought to hundreds of corporate conventions and special events. Among the companies that have featured Team Trivia are Bank of America, CBS Radio, Calvin Klein, General Electric, and the National Association of Broadcasters. Recently Doug has been giving talks at health conferences and hospitals on the topic "Enlighten Up: The Spiritual Path For Those Who Love to Laugh." This talk, which focuses on the close relationship between laughter and spiritual wisdom, is the basis for a book he is currently writing.
Frank is currently Northern California director of Overton Hayward Group, where his clients include palmOne, HP, MetaDesign, and Don Sebastiani & Sons. Previously he has worked with a broad mix of corporate and nonprofit clients, including Amazon.com, Booz-Allen Hamilton, Lehman Brothers, the Pachamama Alliance, the Natural Step, and the Future 500. In addition, Frank is a senior conservation fellow with the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities and series editor for the "Faces of Sustainability" best practice white papers. Previously, Frank managed the editorial group at WetFeet, where he wrote three career books, managed a nine-person editorial team, oversaw the expansion of the print list from 40 to 70 career titles, supervised the revision plan for 60 career titles, and developed 2,000 pages of online content syndicated all over the Web at sites like Monster.com, Yahoo, and Excite. Frank has an MA from Illinois State University, where he studied fiction with David Foster Wallace and Curtis White; a BA from Reed College; and a certificate in newswriting from the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Since leaving his home town he has made training videos in Cambodia, been a wedding photographer in Argentina, been publicist for New Zealand's number one klezmer band, written for and designed a real estate magazine, acted as best man at a wedding in China, worked for a business consultancy offering its clients "metamorphic change," worked on a number of film scripts, and served as a support worker for intellectually handicapped adults. No stranger to approaching problems sideways, Ramsey set up The Albania General Trading Co. Ltd. in 1984 as a way of getting into an otherwise closed country. Apart from his lovely wife (a Kiwi of Greek descent) he claims two passions in life: good food and the printed word. In London he was an early member of The Chocolate Society, and currently he's on the committee of the local Slow Food chapter. Suggesting that "the shape of letters can be a sublime expression of emotion", Ramsey has under his fingers one of the world's largest selections of typefaces, enabling him to express emotion on behalf of his clients with the finesse of an opera singer.
Ockenden is the owner and lead consultant for Withinsight Services, a company in western Canada providing planning, project-management and change-leadership support to government, business and not-for-profit sectors. This work leads to interesting juxtapositions at times - working with Molson Brewing while completing a rural addictions study, for example. The company is known for providing customized solutions with insight, integrity and more than a little humor. Ockenden lives with his family of four in a co-housing development in a pristine mountain valley in British Columbia. He is known to leave the valley on occasion to consult, to serve as Board Chair for Amnesty International (Canada) and to visit interesting places across the planet. He is also known to read, write, argue and play the trombone badly.
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