BrainTrust
The Bios of our BrainTrustees
Evan Eisenberg
Evan Eisenberg, director of BrainTrust, is an acclaimed author,
consultant, and speaker known for combining cutting-edge ideas with
dazzling style and delightful humor. His essays, articles, satire, and
fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic,
Discover, the New York Times, and numerous other periodicals.
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.
Elana Berkowitz
Elana currently works at the Center for American Progress, John
Podesta's think tank, where she was recruited to conceptualize, develop
and launch their newest web publication, CampusProgress.org, in under
two months. The site lets young progressives share issues and ideas and
features a blend of investigative reporting, original comics, opinions
pieces, tools and resources, satire, music downloads, and culture
pieces as well as a fledgling blogging community. She also
helped organize a national conference for 700 progressive students
that featured speakers ranging from President Bill Clinton to author
Thomas Frank.
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.
Eric Booth
A widely acclaimed actor, author, speaker, consultant, and entrepreneur,
Booth is often described as one of America's most creative and effective
teachers of the arts. After receiving an MFA in Theatre Arts from
Stanford, he embarked on a 20-year career in the theater, during which he
acted in six plays on Broadway (with Anne Bancroft, Rex Harrison, Mary
Tyler Moore and others) and dozens of plays off-Broadway and at leading
theaters around the country. He has performed often on television,
directed five productions, and produced two plays in New York.
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.
Herbert Bernstein
Dr. Herbert Bernstein is a theoretical physicist, professor of physics at
Hampshire College, and president of ISIS. He is expert on technology and
society issues, theoretical quantum mechanics, and innovative education.
Author and co-author of numerous scientific articles and two books, Herb
has lectured on five continents to audiences ranging from kindergarten
children in Israel to 500 Chinese doctors at MIT.
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.
Alva Rogers
A prize-winning playwright, actor, musician, and performance artist,
Rogers was Playwright-in-Residence at New York's Joseph Papp Public
Theater in 2003-04. The Village Voice has called her "New York's Down
Diva," while the New York Times has described her as "...a natural mimic,
brilliantly funny and acidic in her portrayals."
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.
Michael Singer
Michael Singer is redefining the role of the artist in society in ways not
seen since the Renaissance. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s his work
opened new possibilities for outdoor and indoor sculpture and the
development of public places. His recent work has been recognized for
making large-scale public-works projects responsive both to aesthetic
concerns and to the desires of the communities they serve. In 1993, the
New York Times chose Singer's design of a massive waste recycling and
transfer station in Phoenix as one of the top eight design events of the
year.
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.
Dave Soldier
Dave Soldier is a neuroscientist and composer. As Dave Sulzer (his real
name) he received a Ph.D in neuroscience at Columbia University, where he
is now professor in the Neurology and Psychiatry departments. He directs
the program in Basic Neuroscience and Drugs of Abuse and heads a large
basic science laboratory studying synaptic properties and Parkinson's
Disease at Columbia University Medical Center. He is credited with
discovering the molecular mechanism of action of amphetamine and has made
significant contributions to understanding the causes of Parkinson's and
Huntington's Disease, drug-induced neurodegeneration, and the synaptic
changes underlying learning and memory. Active as a lecturer, editor, and
teacher, Sulzer has written over 100 scientific articles in journals
including Science, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, and the Journal of
Neuroscience.
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.
Carrie Bernstein
A polymath with experience in research, information technology,
fundraising, communications, and financial management, Carrie is founder
and Executive Director of the New Haven Center for Economic Interpretation
(NHCEI), a nonprofit organization devoted to community-based research and
economic education for local empowerment. Previously, during the conflict
in the former Yugoslavia, she cofounded the Student Organization
Advocating Peace (SOAP), a group whose mission is to empower youth, link
communities of children, and expose and ameliorate the effects of war and
poverty on young people. SOAP has focused on the former Yugoslavia and
Haiti, exclusively utilizing a process of consensus. SOAP received the
Pax Christi award and a personal commendation from Elie Wiesel for
"Children in War," an exhibition of artwork by young refugees in the
former Yugoslavia.
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.
David Rothenberg
Philosopher, musician, poet, translator, and editor, David Rothenberg is
the author of Sudden Music: Improvisation, Art, Nature; Blue Cliff Record:
Zen Echoes; Hand¹s End: Technology and the Limits of Nature; Always the
Mountains; and the just-issued Why Birds Sing (Basic Books/Penguin UK
2005). He is founding editor of the Terra Nova book series, and his
articles have appeared in Parabola, Orion, The Nation, Wired, Sierra,
CEO/International Strategies, and other periodicals. He performs and
speaks all over the world.
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.
Madeleine Robins
Madeleine Robins is the author of nine novels in genres including science
fiction, fantasy, romance, and historical mystery. The Stone War (Tor,
1999) was a New York Times Notable Book; Point of Honour (Forge, 2003) was
one of Booklist's Ten Best Historicals for the year. Over the past few
decades she has been an editor, writer, administrator, ghostwriter,
SAFD-certified actor-combatant, and teacher. She was coordinator of the
Career Discovery program at the Harvard University Graduate School of
Design, with over 400 students in her charge. She worked in the Mortgage
Finance department at Credit Suisse First Boston before going freelance,
writing, editing and even designing for clients as diverse as Kurzweil,
Voyetra Systems, BR Data Systems, Boise Tonight, The ffactory, Ltd.,
Financial Strategies,Inc., Korg, and Musication. She worked at Tor Books
and at Metropolis Magazine before succumbing to her inner adolescent and
becoming an editor at Acclaim Comics. There she oversaw a diverse
schedule of comic books, as many as six a month, and spearheaded the
reintroduction of Classics Illustrated comics as study guides. Since 1998
she has returned to freelance writing full time, for clients including
HarperPrism, Scholastic, Starlight Runner Productions, and Aerie Books.
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 Roma
Gary Roma is a filmmaker and comedian. His Puss in Books: Adventures of
the Library Cat has been screened at the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, DC and had an extended run at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
It has been screened at a dozen film and video festivals, won the Best
Documentary award at the United States 8mm Film and Video Festival, and
has been featured on Fox News Channel's nationally broadcast Pet News.
Off the Ground & Off the Wall: A Doorstop Documentary won numerous awards;
was screened at over two dozen film festivals in the United States,
Canada, and England; and was broadcast nationally on Bravo and the
Independent Film Channel. Gary is currently in production on his next
film FLOSS! A Meditation on the Possibility of Change.
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 Bean is graduating this spring from Brown University. He grew up in
New York City. During his junior year in high school, he wrote a play and
decided he wanted to produce it. Despite bleak predictions by parents and
other adults, he and seven friends ran a collection of short, original
plays for four nights at Collective Unconscious, on the Lower East Side.
The production, including booking, cost approximately $650 and ticket
sales grossed over $800. Max's subsequent theatrical productions have
been more experimental and not quite as profitable, but have received rave
reviews in various campus newspapers.
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.
Richard Kaplan
In the 25 years since graduating from Brown University and Rhode Island
School of Design, Richard Kaplan got himself an education. He learned on
his first job, writing narration on ceramics for Orson Welles, how to
become an instant expert. His expertise as an award-winning writer,
producer and director of television ranges from the sacred to the profane:
from U.N. Peacekeeping to God in the Classroom, from kids music to
cosmology, from endangered animals to the danger of Unabomber Ted
Kaczynski, and from the Attica Prison uprising to pension fund management.
His works have aired on PBS, History Channel, Animal Planet, CNBC, and
NBC, and he has written and produced many museum documentaries (including
permanent exhibits at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Ellis
Island) as well as corporate films and commercials for business behemoths
Philip Morris, Ricoh, Dean Witter, Time Warner, AOL, and Road Runner.
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.
Robin Fiore
Equally conversant with spreadsheets and syllogisms, Robin Fiore is a
publicly engaged philosopher who has previously worked as an underwriter,
account executive, corporate consultant, and manager. As Adelaide R.
Snyder Professor of Ethics at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL,
she teaches moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, and
environmental philosophy. Her specialty is applied ethics: business and
professional ethics, biomedical ethics, environmental ethics, research
ethics, and issues involving women and aging.
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 Grunther
Doug Grunther is the creator and host of "The Woodstock Roundtable," an
award-winning radio talk program broadcast over WDST-FM, Woodstock, NY,
and over the Web at aol.com. The program features provocative thinkers,
talented musicians, and people who like to laugh. Among Doug's guests
have been Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, comedian Jackie
Mason, Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, and Lovin' Spoonful John
Sebastian. As one of the original founders of WDST-FM, Woodstock's
world-renowned radio station, Doug helped create the format that has won
many Billboard Station of the Year awards.
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 Marquardt
Equally at home in the business world and the literary avant-garde, Frank
Marquardt is co-author of both the award-winning hypertext novel The
Unknown and palmOne's Now You Know Zire. A journalist, writer, and editor
specializing in workplace culture, technology, and sustainability, he has
published in periodicals as diverse as Fortune, Wired, San Francisco Bay
Guardian, and Kitchen Sink. As a consultant, he has evaluated companies
for Fortune's "100 Best Companies to Work For" and the Society of Human
Resource Managers' "50 Best Small and Medium Sized Companies" lists and
revised the Cultural Practices of the 100 Best.
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.
Ramsey Margolies
His working life shaped in London's typesetting trade, Ramsey Margolis
brings to BrainTrust a wealth of experience in communications and business
development. During the 1980s he set up what became one of the UK's
premier translation agencies, WorldAccent. In the mid '90s he gave it
away to the workers, sold his London home, and spent four years working
his way around the world until, reaching New Zealand, he settled in the
capital city of Wellington. There he runs 3531 Communications, a
multidisciplinary design consultancy whose major focus is on business
development through clear, accurate and effective interplay of word and
image.
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.
Gary Ockenden
The son of Canadian Air Force officer, Gary Ockenden was born traveling
and has been traveling ever since. This journey has taken him to more
than 20 countries. He has lived and worked in Africa, Europe, the US and
Canada. Interesting stops along the way have included a stint in an
Israeli kibbutz; logistics management in the Land of the Midnight Sun;
self-discovery in an Indian ashram; senior leadership with International
Red Cross relief operations in Sudan; freelance writing for print and
radio; and managing health services for a large rural area.
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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