Author: Webmaster (Page 31 of 97)

Mark Contreras, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Connecticut Public and a member of the board of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), will speak to us on the role of public television in the State of Connecticut.

Mark has led several media businesses through digital transformation. Prior to his role as dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University, Contreras served as CEO of Calkins Media, a privately-held local television, digital and local newspaper publishing company. Calkins developed innovative strategies to maximize audience reach, engagement and revenue by embracing streaming media platforms such as Roku, Amazon Fire and Apple TV. He previously led local newspaper publishing and digital businesses for three public companies including Capital Cities/ABC, Pulitzer, Inc. and The E.W. Scripps Co.

In addition, he served as chairman of the News Media Association and the American Press Institute. He is a fellow of the Millennium Class of Henry Crown Fellows of the Aspen Institute. He serves on the board of directors of Highlights for Children in Columbus, Ohio and Woodward Communications, Inc in Dubuque, Iowa.

The son of an Irish-American school teacher and a Mexican immigrant, Mark grew up in the Midwest—first in Minneapolis and later Chicago. He has an A.B. in History from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Mark and his wife, Marybeth Sughrue, have one adult son, Michael.

Video Presentation  

Arranged by Tom Igoe and Charles Salmans

David Genovese, who leads Baywater Properties, a privately held commercial real estate company serving Fairfield and Westchester Counties, will provide us with an update on the progress of the Corbin District Project, a major undertaking involving the development of a series of new buildings, shops, residential facilities and public community spaces in the heart of Darien that will forever transform and enliven the character of our Town.

David founded Baywater Properties in 2001, following a 12-year career in real estate investment banking in New York and London. Prior to founding Baywater, David served as co-head of Real Estate Investment Banking for Credit Suisse First Boston. Previously, David served as a managing director in Bankers Trust Company’s Real Estate Investment Banking Group.

Through the course of his career in investment banking, David was responsible for a variety of transactions valued in excess of $15.0 billion, including mergers and acquisitions, equity offerings, bond offerings, securitized financings, bank loans, and principal investments.

David is an honors graduate of Colby College and The London School of Economics and Political Science. David also received an MBA from The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. David is currently a member of the board of directors of The Human Services Council of Norwalk, the Darien Athletic Foundation and The Real Estate Finance Association of Connecticut. David has served as a member of the board of overseers of Colby College, and as a board member of the Darien Technology and Community Foundation, the Darien YMCA, the Darien Historical Society, and Darien Revitalization, Inc. In 2007, David was named as one of the “40 under 40” business leaders in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Video Presentation 

Arranged by Tom Igoe

DMA member and past president Sunil Saksena will speak to our group on the presidential election of 1876. That election was marred by claims of fraud, voter intimidation, arbitrarily changed vote counts and multiple sets of “certified” electoral college votes. It was followed by 4 months of chaotic negotiations and backroom compromises involving Congressional committees, Supreme Court Justices and campaign representatives. Finally, just 2 days before Inauguration Day, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner by 1 electoral vote over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, who won the popular vote by a huge margin.

Sunil was born in Lucknow, India in 1944. He graduated high school from La Martiniere College, Lucknow and received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.

He worked at Union Carbide India before proceeding to University of California at Berkeley for graduate work. He received both a masters degree in engineering as well as an MBA from Berkeley. He worked as a Mechanical Engineer at American Can Company in San Francisco where his claim to fame is that he designed the machine that puts the can cover on the beer can making it safe for you beer drinkers to imbibe. For the majority of his career, Sunil was in finance: first, as an international banker with Bankers Trust Company serving in Mumbai, Singapore and New York and then, as an investment advisor with Fidelity Investments from which he retired in 2004.

He and his wife Deepika have lived in Darien since 1985. They have two sons, one a doctor and the other a lawyer.

Arranged by Tom Igoe

Video Presentation 

Vanessa Maczko is a Partner in Wiggin and Dana’s Private Client Services Department in the Greenwich, CT office. She will brief our group on important recent developments in federal and Connecticut trusts and estates laws that affect estate planning, wills and trusts, distribution of assets to beneficiaries and charitable giving.

Vanessa advises individuals and families on multi-generational transfers of assets, such as closely-held business interests, marketable securities, art collections, real estate, tangible personal property and insurance policies. Her practice focuses on estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer tax planning. For lifetime planning, Vanessa drafts and analyzes inter vivos trust agreements, such as insurance trusts, grantor trusts and dynasty trusts. She advises clients on the funding of trusts, whether through direct or formula gifting or leveraged sales, as well as on the administration and taxation of trusts. Vanessa prepares and reviews gift tax returns in connection with the transfer of assets and represents clients in gift tax audits with the Internal Revenue Service. In addition, she advises clients on the structuring of new investments and the restructuring of existing businesses with a focus on transitioning wealth and control to the next generation in a tax efficient manner that maintains continuity.

Vanessa also assists with the preparation of testamentary documents and estate administration, including the probating of wills, the marshalling of assets, the filing of state and federal estate tax returns, the sale of estate assets and the distribution of assets among estate beneficiaries.

Vanessa advises clients on charitable giving by forming and administering private foundations, setting up donor advised funds, papering pledges and drafting charitable lead and charitable remainder trusts.

Vanessa received her LL.M. from New York University, her J.D. from Harvard Law School, and her B.A. from the University of Michigan. Vanessa started her career with the Trusts and Estates group at Weil, Gotshal and Manges LLP and then transitioned to the Private Client Services group at Proskauer Rose LLP. Vanessa lives with her husband and two children in Greenwich.

Vanessa L. Maczko

(she/her/hers)
Direct: 203.363.7667 | vmaczko@wiggin.com
www.wiggin.com

Video Presentation 

Arranged by Tom Igoe

John Lindback will speak with our group on the topic of elections administration, voter registration and the possibilities of voter fraud. John first entered the field of elections administration in 1995 and has made it his personal goal for the past 27 years to make voter registration and voting work better for both voters and election officials.

John served from 2014 to 2017 as the Executive Director of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the consortium of states using state-of-the-art technology to improve the accuracy of their voter registration rolls and improve access to voter registration for U.S. citizens. Prior to joining ERIC, he served as a Senior Officer for Election Initiatives at the Pew Charitable Trusts, providing key leadership on Pew’s portfolio of work in election administration, including a Pew project that assisted with the creation of ERIC.

Prior to joining Pew, Lindback worked for 14 years in state elections administration. He served for eight years as Director of Elections in the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office.  During his tenure with the Oregon Secretary of State he was elected president in 2008 of the National Association of State Elections Directors.  He was also elected to serve on the executive board of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission’s Standards Advisory Board. Prior to his work in Oregon, John worked as chief of staff to the lieutenant governor of Alaska for six years, which included administrative oversight of the Alaska Division of Elections.

In addition, he served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that studied state voter registration databases. John volunteered as an advisor to Design for Democracy, an organization that assisted elections officials with designing voter-friendly ballots and other elections materials. He has also served as a volunteer international elections observer for the U.S. State Department. He observed elections in Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kyrgyzstan, and the Republic of Georgia.

Lindback holds a B.A. degree in journalism (1976) from the University of Arizona.

Video Presentation 

Arranged by Ric Grefe

DMA member Flemming Heilmann will discuss his recently released translation of Halfdan Lefevre’s book entitled The Men in Denmark’s Freedom Council. This seminal work, first published in Danish in 1945, is the story of Denmark’s resistance leaders, their underground movement during Nazi occupation and how they coordinated the nation’s freedom fighters to mount military confrontation of the enemy. Their 11-member Freedom Council went on to form a government-in-waiting in anticipation of liberation to run the country pending restoration of democratic elections. Each member’s family background and career are vividly depicted. Lefevre, from the start of World War II, had documented the genesis and evolution of the resistance movement and its struggle against Nazi occupation since April 1940. He was the recording scribe for the underground Freedom Council and author of illegal leaflets and news communiques distributed by the resistance. His scholarly account offers details of the German invasion, the government’s quick surrender, and then the emergence of the resistance movement, which led to the establishment of the crucial Freedom Council. Flemming has carefully translated this book into English so a broader audience can appreciate the sacrifices these brave men made for their country.

Fleming was born in Malaysia to Danish parents and studied at Cambridge University, where he graduated with degrees in economics and law. He has since held executive and CEO positions in the manufacturing sector focused on the consumer goods packaging industry, mainly public companies listed on the Johannesburg, Toronto and New York stock exchanges, and has most recently been associated with investment in and management of buy-outs of distressed businesses, with multiple directorships in public and private companies in South Africa, Western Europe, Canada and the United States.

In 2017 Flemming published Odyssey Uncharted, a memoir of World War II childhood and education on four continents, set in mid-20th century history, and in 2019 published his second book, The Unacceptable Face, charting a career on three continents under apartheid, extreme socialism and disparate iterations of capitalism.  His translation of Halfdan Lefevre’s The Men in Denmark’s Freedom Council was published in February 2022 by Telemachus Press.

Arranged by Tom Igoe

Bobbi Phelps Chapman will speak to us on her latest book, Darien Waters, which describes historical facts and dramatic details of the ‘40s, ‘50s and early ‘60s. In her narrative of growing up in Darien, she writes of wealth, secrets, schemes, and intrigue in our beautiful waterside town.

Bobbi graduated from Darien High School in 1961. She attended Pine Manor College and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. Bobbi became an international flight attendant in 1965, working flights to the Orient, Europe, and into Vietnam during the height of the war. On a vacation by herself, she became the only tourist (along with 560 business, media, and political men) locked up in the Cairo Hilton during the Israel/Egypt conflict in 1967, the Six-Day War. Stories of her airline adventures and experiences are detailed in Behind the Smile during the Glamour Years of Aviation.

Bobbi started the Angler’s Calendar and Catalog Company in 1975. Her company won Exporter of the Year in 1993 from the State of Idaho (small business category). With the publication of Flyfishing Always, she became an Arnold Gingrich writer recipient from Fly Fishers International. Sky Ranch, her book about living on a remote potato farm in Idaho, won a five-star award from Literary Titans and a first-place gold medal from Feathered Quill Book Reviews.

Besides her many awards, Bobbi was a 20-year member of the Outdoor Writers Association of America and a nine-year Idaho board member for The Nature Conservancy.

When Bobbi retired and married Larry Chapman (Darien Class of 1959), she continued to write. They moved to Tennessee and the Authors Guild of Tennessee twice voted her president. Her website is www.booksbybobbi.com.

Arranged by Tom Igoe and Charles Salmans

Video Presentation