Don’t miss out on this year’s sailing season’s final chance to enjoy a lovely sunset cruise on the Long Island Sound!
The DMA will be setting sail on SoundWaters, an 80 ft 3 masted schooner, for a delightful 2-hour sunset cruise from 5-7 pm on September 29 (rain date: October 1). We’ll have liquid refreshments and light dinner fare on board.
We’ll be gathering at 4:30 pm at the Cohen SoundWaters Harbor Center at Boccuzzi Park in Stamford.
Tickets are $75 per person.
Robert Dawe M.D.
Mark McCarthy grew up in Springfield, Mass. He met his wife Leslie while attending graduate school in Chicago. They have lived in Darien for 32 years, and raised their three sons here. All three, Connor (32), Brad (30) and Ryan (27), attended the Darien public schools and were active in Post 53, lacrosse and golf throughout their school years. Today, they live in Manhattan, and Mark’s oldest son Connor is engaged, with a wedding date set for July 2027.
Mark and Leslie spend winters in Bonita Springs, Fla. and are members of the Bonita Bay Club. They are also members of Woodway Country Club, where Mark is an avid golfer and Leslie plays on the tennis team.
He has been a member of the Darien Boat Club for more than three decades and enjoys boating and fishing on Long Island Sound. He’s an avid music fan and plays guitar. In addition, Mark has been a board member of the Lincoln Center Real Estate Council in New York.
Mark spent most of his career in commercial real estate in New York and recently retired from Shorenstein Properties after 27 years. His responsibilities included real estate acquisitions, dispositions and debt capital markets.
Mark graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with a B.B.A., and from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with an M.B.A. Mark is also a Certified Public Accountant.
Allan Andersen was born and raised in Denmark, where he lived until 1997. A competitive swimmer and squash player in his youth, he remains an avid scuba diver today.
He holds a Master of Science in Economics. He began his career in management consulting before finding his calling in high-tech software, focusing on product management and strategy. In 1991, he co-founded a software company with a friend, which was acquired in 1997 by Long Island-based Computer Associates (CA). Following the acquisition, Allan relocated to the United States to support the integration.
It was through the CA acquisition that Allan met his future wife, Ina Ghaznavi, who was part of the deal on the US side. Ina was born in Switzerland to an Iranian family and moved to the United States at a young age. Ina and Allan are passionate about Africa, education, and technology and have traveled to Africa nearly twenty times since 2010, working to bring advanced learning technologies to children in rural communities.
In 2021, they relocated to Darien, Connecticut, to be closer to Riverside, where their three grandchildren live — a move they say they only regret not having made sooner.
For the past eleven years, Allan has focused on advancing artificial intelligence, specializing in automation and conversational AI — technology now widely recognized as Agentic AI.
Jim Baclawski and his wife, Rebecca, maintain their primary residence in Amherst, New Hampshire, but have also made Darien a second home. They feel particularly fortunate that all three of their children live here in Darien—Diana Turowski and her husband, Edward; John Baclawski and his wife, Brittany; and James Baclawski and his wife, Christy—along with their nine grandchildren. With their entire immediate family in one town, having a place of their own here was an easy decision, as they spend a great deal of time with family.
Jim was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and attended the University of Notre Dame, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and swam on the varsity swim team. He later earned an MBA from Babson College in Boston and began his career with Pricewaterhouse on the audit staff.
Jim spent the balance of his career in energy finance. He worked at Prudential Capital as a senior lender to investor-owned electric utilities, financing power plants, fuel and utility fleets, and energy projects using a variety of fuel sources. He subsequently worked in energy finance at Heller Financial, later acquired by GE Capital, and as an equity investor with Lakeside Energy. Jim eventually formed his own company, Emerald Renewable Diesel, to develop projects in the renewable fuels sector.
Jim’s primary interest in Darien is family, and he especially enjoys watching his grandchildren participate in Darien sports, including football, lacrosse, basketball, field hockey, and baseball. Jim is joining the DMA to get to know more of the guys in town and take part in the many activities the Association sponsors.
Outside of family, Jim is an avid snow skier and works hard to ski 30 days a year in New England, the Rocky Mountains, and Europe. He is always looking for a ski buddy. During the offseason, he works out at the YMCA to stay in shape for the next ski season.
Jim is also a mediocre tennis player and golfer and has yet to try pickleball—but that may be coming soon.
The first Current Affairs meeting of the 2026-2027 DMA year will happen on Thursday, September 17 at 3pm (NOTE TIME CHANGE!) in the Lillian Gade Room at the DCA and on Zoom.
“From the bestselling, prize-winning author of SAY NOTHING, a powerfully compelling account of a family devastated by the apparent suicide of their nineteen year-old son, only to discover he had created a separate identity which drew him into the dangerous international criminal underworld underlying London’s glittering surface. In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, captured a video of a young man pacing back and forth on a balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury building on the opposite bank of the Thames River. At 2:24 a.m., he jumped. In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried. She hadn’t heard from her son Zac, who told her he had gone to stay with a friend for the night, but wasn’t answering his phone. Five days later, a police car pulled up in front of the house, and she knew she was about to hear the news every parent dreads: Her son was dead. In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband Matthew tried to understand what had happened to Zac. He had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. But his death was just the beginning of the shocks: The man who owned the apartment in Riverwalk, a wealthy businessman named Akbar Shamji, told them he knew Zac by a different identity: Zac Ismailov, the child of a wealthy Russian oligarch, whose widowed mother was living in Dubai and freezing him out of his inheritance. Then they learned that the apartment was occupied by a notorious gangster known as “Indian Dave” in London criminal circles. Indian Dave had been implicated in a gangland slaying and fled the country, but for opaque reasons came back to England and was never prosecuted. From the physical evidence and recovered text messages between Shamji and Sharma, it appeared something very different than a suicide had taken place in Riverwalk that night. But to the immense frustration of the Brettlers, Scotland Yard seemed to have no interest in investigating. In a bravura piece of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe delves into a story that peels back multiple layers of mystery, and exposes the seedy truths beneath the glamourous London of posh mansions and private night clubs, a world sustained and abetted by fundamental corruption. Zac Brettler was not the only person in the tale spinning lies. London Falling is a mesmerizing investigation of an inexplicable death, fueled by multiple turns and revelations, but at its heart it is a deeply empathetic portrait of a family trying to understand not just why their son died, but who he was”– Provided by publisher.
On Thursday, September 10, the Hale and Hardy hikers will travel to Southford Falls State Park for a two-mile hike. The park features impressive waterfalls and a beautifully restored covered bridge. The loop trail is marked in red with moderate climbing of some 400 feet up to a fire tower with a 360-degree view of the park’s treetops. There are some rocky portions of the trail where firm soles on your shoes are recommended, and a hiking pole may be useful, but not essential.
For those wishing to carpool, we’ll meet at the back of the DCA parking area at 9:30 am on September 10. Ample parking is available for those not carpooling. Set your maps for the parking area at 175 Quaker Farms Rd, Southbury, CT. Non-DMA members and pets on a leash are welcome to join us.
After our hike, those who are able can join the group for lunch at Dock 34 on the way home in Seymour, CT. It boasts a scenic location and outside tables on the banks of the Housatonic River.
Ralph Corasaniti lives in Norwalk, CT, with his wife of 44 years, Laurie Corasaniti. Laurie is a retired registered nurse. He has three grown children and six grandchildren – soon to be seven. Four of the grandchildren live in Monroe, CT, and two live in Delray Beach, Florida.
Ralph was raised in Bayonne, NJ, and has lived in Norwalk since 1984. He attended Fairfield University and Pace Graduate School of Business. He has worked as a senior tax and financial advisor for a family office based in Darien for the last thirty years. The family office owns operating businesses and has a sophisticated investment subsidiary. Ralph retired from the operating arm of the company in 2022 but remains active as a trustee/advisor to the family office principals.
Ralph is a member of Silvermine Golf Club and plays golf regularly throughout the year. He is also an avid runner, bicyclist, and enjoys reading, listening to music, and playing guitar. Ralph is a longtime active member of the Norwalk Exchange Club. He is a past president and board member of the Exchange Club, participates in several fundraising events a year, and ran its golf outing for over ten years.
He looks forward to engaging with the DMA as both a passive member attending meetings and an active participant in committees and fundraising.
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