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John B. Donovan is retired as a communications adviser to senior corporate executives, domestic and foreign, and the founder of a discussion forum for diplomats and business leaders in New York.

John will be speaking about his experiences a half-century ago pertaining to the Cold War — in Cuba, Vietnam, Berlin, and Washington. He is the son of the late New York lawyer James Donovan, whose story has just been dramatized by Steven Spielberg in the film “Bridge of Spies,” recently nominated for six Oscars. In the climax of the movie, James Donovan, played by Tom Hanks, negotiates the exchange of Soviet master spy Rudolph Abel for the American pilot at the center of what was called the U-2 affair. John himself was detained briefly in East Berlin the following year in an incident that also related to the KGB in a curious way.

Later that year his father negotiated with Fidel Castro for the release of the men captured at the Bay of Pigs, and John accompanied him on one of his negotiation trips as they traveled across Cuba with Fidel Castro – a situation that almost included a bizarre assassination attempt against Castro.

A resident of Norwalk, John is an alumnus of American University’s graduate program in world affairs from the standpoint of communication and is co-author with Pablo Perez-Cisneros of After the Bay of Pigs. He is a former vice chairman of the NY Metro Committee for UNICEF and the author of a book of Bible stories for children.

Charlie Dowd, who is currently Senior VP of Operations for Harbor Yards Sports & Entertainment in Bridgeport, will talk about the funny and not so funny things that have occurred in his over 22 years of senior management experience in minor league baseball and other sports.

He has served as General Manager of the New Haven Ravens and Connecticut Defenders (Norwich, CT) in the AA Eastern League, and CEO and General Manager of the Atlantic League (independent) Bridgeport Bluefish and Newark Bears.

Charlie, who resides in Madison, has a BA degree from CCNY and a Juris Doctorate from the Western New England College School of Law.

Born into a film-business family and raised in Hollywood, Susan appeared as a child actress in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, and Lassie.

For more than 25 years she has been an on-air television and radio critic, bringing an experienced and unique perspective to the movie business. Her commentaries are distributed around the world by SSG Syndicate.

In addition, her work has been published in The New York Times, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, Working Woman, Family Circle, Cosmopolitan, and numerous other publications. Susan is also the feature film critic for Video Librarian magazine, distributed to libraries throughout the country.
For more, see
http://susangranger.com/?page_id=2

Frank Huck has been a member of Darien’s Board of Finance since 2013 and is currently its vice chair. He was elected in 2013 as a Democrat.

A 1969 graduate of Harvard College and a 1972 graduate of Stanford Law School, Frank was a corporate lawyer with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, first as an associate and then as a partner, for 40 years, retiring in 2012.

He was the senior warden at Saint Luke’s in Darien for two years, until earlier this month. He recently completed serving on the Commission on Connecticut’s Leadership in Corporation and Business Law, which was created pursuant to a state statute.

Jayme Stevenson has served as Darien’s First Selectman since 2011, and has been a member of the Darien Board of Selectmen since 2009.

Jayme has lived in Darien for 24 years with her husband and 5 children. She has served on a wide variety of Darien non-profit boards including The Depot, the Darien Nature Center, and First Congregational Church Nursery School. She has also served as PTO Chair for Royle Elementary School and Darien High School.

First Selectman Stevenson is pleased to provide Darien Men’s Association with a “State of the Town” update that will include a review of town operations, the outlook for changes in the near future, and her work with the new regional Council of Governments.

She is looking forward to answering our questions.

Mark Albertson is the historical research editor at Army Aviation magazine. He has authored several books, including On History: A Treatise; and, is finishing volume 1, Sky Soldiers: The Saga of Army Aviation. An avid speaker, he travels Connecticut presenting a variety of historical topics and current events. He teaches as an adjunct at Norwalk Community College for the Extend Studies Program and for the Lifetime Learners Institute.
Mark’s talk on Syria will focus on the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. How ISIS is filling a void left by the United States pull out; and the Russian intervention and what that has to do with the current situation in Ukraine; the competition between Russia and Saudi Arabia selling oil and gas.

Mr. Joyce will address the evolution of equity trading from the “stone age” several decades ago, when the NYSE was predominate with its fixed commission rates, to the present day with all the changes in electronic trading, considerably higher volumes, internationalization, changes in the overall structure of the exchanges, compressed spreads between bids and offers, and the advent of the phenomenon of high speed computer program trading.

The book Flash Boys by Michael Lewis was certainly an eye opener for many, notwithstanding the errors throughout the book, in terms of the sheer, almost incomprehensible speed of the trading. The good news is that the data says equity trading in the US has never been better for the retail investor. Tom will discuss this and more when he visits.

Tom Joyce is a recognized leader in the financial services industry. He has over thirty years of experience, both domestic and internationally. He is currently Executive Chairman of Arxis Capital.

Prior to Arxis, Tom was Chairman and CEO of Knight Capital Group. He joined Knight in 2002 and retired in July 2013. From January through May of 2002, Mr. Joyce was Global Head of Trading for S.C. Bernstein & Co.
Before that, he held a variety of leadership roles in the Global Institutional Equity business at Merrill Lynch & Co, during his almost fifteen years there.
He is a member of the Boards of Special Olympics Connecticut; the Alfred E. Smith Foundation; and Salisbury School. Mr. Joyce received an AB in Economics from Harvard College.

He has resided in Darien with his wife, Lisa, for almost thirty years. They have three children.

The past year as been a time of dramatic upheaval in the domestic energy markets. The oil industry has gone from boom to bust while the USA produces record amounts of hydrocarbons. Clean air regulatory mandates have destroyed the coal industry. Wind and solar are growing in leaps and bounds, but from a very small base. Volatility in the fossil fuels commodity markets is expected to continue, perhaps with more intense peaks and valleys. New Canaan resident Skip Hobbs will present his take on the energy markets as a prominent consulting geologist and energy analyst.

G. Warfield “Skip” Hobbs is a geologist and Founder and Managing Partner of Ammonite Resources, a firm of international petroleum and mining geotechnical and business consultants which has been headquartered in New Canaan, Connecticut since 1982.

Hobbs holds a B.Sc. Degree in Geology from Yale College and a M.Sc. Degree in Petroleum Geology from the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College, London.

He has served as an elected officer of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, and from 2004-2012 served on the Executive Committee of the American Geological Institute, a federation of 50 geoscience professional societies representing over 250,000 members in every earth science discipline. He was AGI President in 2010-2011. Hobbs was a member of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents in Washington, D.C., from 2009-2012, where he served as Co-Chair of the Committee on Energy and the Environment. From 2000-2014 Skip was a Trustee of the New Canaan Nature Center and was president of the Nature Center from 2012-2014.

He is currently on the board of the Waveny Park Conservancy. Hobbs writes and lectures frequently on energy economics and energy policy, and on environmental issues.

In his spare time Skip manages a family farm in Massachusetts that produces organically grown vegetables, honey, maple syrup, grass-fed beef, and timber .

skiphobbs@ammoniteresources.com

Geoff joined YPCCC in 2012. As Research Director, he manages and oversees the Climate Change in the American Mind biannual survey measuring American public opinion on global warming.

Prior to joining YPCCC, he was a vice president at GfK North America, where he specialized in public opinion, thought leadership, social marketing, and strategic communications research. At GfK, Geoff co-founded and was the GfK director of the Associated Press-GfK Poll, which covers a range of current political and social topics and is one of the most widely reported media polls in the world, reaching upwards of an estimated two billion people monthly.

He was also a chief research advisor for the Meth Project, a philanthropic organization devoted to reducing methamphetamine use among teens.

In 2011, it was ranked by Barron’s Magazine as the third-most effective philanthropy in the world. In the environmental arena, Geoff served as research consultant to The Sustaining Family Forests Initiative. He has also conducted national polls on environmental topics for Yale and Stanford.

http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication/about/staff