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Bonnie Siegler is the founder and creative director of award-winning, multi-disciplinary, graphic design studio, Eight and a Half. The author of Dear Client, a guide for people who work with creatives, and Signs of Resistance, a visual history of protest in America, she also taught design in the graduate schools of Yale University and the School of Visual Arts for many years. She lives in Westport.

Helene Stapinski is the nationally bestselling author of three memoirs: Five-Finger Discount, Murder in Matera, andBaby Plays Around. She writes regularly for The New York Times; her work has also appeared in The Washington Post,New York,Travel & Leisure, and dozens of other publications. She teaches at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.

Annelise Osborne is Chief Business Officer at Kadena, a blockchain technology company, where she is focused on upgrading finance. Annelise has over 20 years of experience in finance, credit, real estate, family office, risk, structuring, governance, and digital assets. She was previously Head of Institutional for Arca Labs, working with companies to drive blockchain innovation through strategic partnerships and advisory services as well as COO of Propellr, a broker dealer in digital assets. Annelise spent 12 years at Moody’s Investor Service running teams in structured finance. She is a thought leader, board advisor, university lecturer and author. Her book, From Hoodies to Suits: Innovating Digital Assets in Traditional Finance, hit shelves in June. Annelise holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA in Economics from The College of William and Mary.

Jon E. Zagrodzky serves as First Selectman for the Town of Darien, having been elected to this position on November 7, 2023. Jon’s prior Town roles include: member of the Board of Selectmen; member and chairman of the Board of Finance; member of the Town and Police Pension Board; member of the Public Works Garage and Ox Ridge School Building Committee Board; member and president of the Darien Historical Society.

Until his December 2023 retirement, Jon served as COO and CFO at Rhône Group, LLC, a middle market private equity firm, where he was responsible for finance, operations, human resources, administration, information technology, and business planning. Prior to Rhône, he was CAO and Chief Compliance Officer at Oak Hill Capital Management and before that spent 16 years at McKinsey & Company.

Jon earned a BA in Economics and Romance Languages from Washington & Lee University and an MBA from The Wharton School.  He is a commercial pilot and owns a Piper Seneca III. Jon moved to Darien with his wife, Sara, and their two children, Maggie and Jack, in 2005.

John Sullivan, our American ambassador who was on the diplomatic front lines when Putin invaded Ukraine,  will share a behind-the-scenes account of how U.S.-Russia relations hit their nadir

For weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, John J. Sullivan, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow, was warning that it would happen. When troops finally crossed the border, he was woken in the middle of the night with a prearranged code. The signal was even more bracing than the February cold: it meant that Sullivan needed to collect his bodyguards and get to the embassy as soon as possible. The war had begun, and the world would never be the same.

In Midnight in Moscow, Sullivan leads readers into the offices of the U.S. embassy and the halls of the Kremlin during this climactic period—among the most dangerous since World War II. He shows how the Putin regime repeatedly lied about its intentions to invade Ukraine in the weeks leading up to the attack, while also devoting huge numbers of personnel and vast resources to undermining the U.S. diplomatic mission in Russia. And he explains how, when Putin ultimately gave the order to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he proved that Russia was not just at war with its neighbor: it was also at war, in a very real sense, with the United States, and with everything that it represents. But while Putin decided how this conflict started, its ending will be shaped by us.

With his unique perspective on a pivotal moment in world history, Sullivanshows how our relationship with Russia has deteriorated, where it’s headed, and how far we should be prepared to go in standing up to the menace in Moscow.

Mark Nunan, a long time DMA member and prolific convener and presenter, will provide a focus on Slovenia, its history and place historically in Europe and in the geopolitics of the 20th century—the nature of the country, its experience in the world wars, its post-war assimilation by Yugoslavia, and its eventual emergence as an independent nation.

Slavoj Žižek, philosopher and Director of the Birbeck Institute of the Humanities at London University is the best-known Slovenian public intellectual. He has pointed to the many paradoxes characterizing the Balkans, and his home country, as follows.

“This very alibi confronts us with the first of many paradoxes concerning Balkan: its geographic delimitation was never precise. It is as if one can never receive a definitive answer to the question, “Where does it begin?” For Serbs, it begins down there in Kosovo or Bosnia, and they defend the Christian civilization against this Europe’s Other. For Croats, it begins with the Orthodox, despotic, Byzantine Serbia, against which Croatia defends the values of democratic Western civilization. For Slovenes, it begins with Croatia, and we Slovenes are the last outpost of the peaceful Mitteleuropa. For Italians and Austrians, it begins with Slovenia, where the reign of the Slavic hordes starts. For Germans, Austria itself, on account of its historic connections, is already tainted by Balkanic corruption and inefficiency. For some arrogant Frenchmen, Germany is associated with the Balkanian Eastern savagery—up to the extreme case of some conservative anti-European-Union Englishmen for whom, in an implicit way, it is ultimately the whole of continental Europe itself that functions as a kind of Balkan Turkish global empire with Brussels as the new Constantinople, the capricious despotic center threatening English freedom and sovereignty. So Balkan is always the Other: it lies somewhere else, always a little bit more to the southeast, with the paradox that, when we reach the very bottom of the Balkan peninsula, we again magically escape Balkan. Greece is no longer Balkan proper, but the cradle of our Western civilization.”

That’s a lot to think about! Mark will try to sort it out.

Mark, who currently lives in Slovenia, was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1953. At an early age, he moved to Alabama. He graduated from the University of Alabama in 1976. He continued his education at Stanford University, where he was awarded a master’s in 1979 and a Ph.D. in 1983. Mark also studied at L’ENS (L’école normale supérieure) and at the University of Paris-Sorbonne in Paris as part of his Ph.D. program.

Mark started his career at COS Inc. in 1982 in Palo Alto, Calif., and then transferred to Paris and New York City, where he retired as a senior vice president in 2018. COS is a private firm that provides business and economic development services, assisting companies and governments to research, develop and implement new business expansion opportunities globally.

Ron Darling serves as a game analyst for SportsNet New York (SNY) covering the New York Mets. He is also the lead game analyst for Turner Sports’ (TBS) MLB regular and post-season telecast coverage as well as a studio analyst year-around for MLB Network.

Ron joined SNY in 2006 and works alongside former teammate Keith Hernandez and play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen. In addition to his game analyst work, Darling also contributes to SNY’s Mets pre- and post-game shows and to the SNY website. Darling won an Emmy Award for best “Sports Analyst” in his first season with SNY and again in 2011.

Since 2013, Darling has served as an offseason studio analyst, where he regularly appears on the Emmy Award-winning flagship show MLB Tonight and the daily offseason morning show Hot Stove.

During his playing days on the diamond, Darling spent nine seasons as a starting pitcher for the New York Mets highlighted by winning the 1986 World Series. During his 13-year career, the Gold Glove winner also played five seasons with the Oakland Athletics after a short stint with the Montreal Expos. He amassed a win-loss record of 136-116 and recorded 1,590 strikeouts with a 3.87 ERA.

Ron was inducted into the College Baseball Hall of Fame this past February. He was a student at Yale from 1979-81.

Ron has made a significant impact in the community through the Ron Darling Foundation, raising money for diabetes research due to his eldest son Jordan being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at age 11. He also sits on the Board of Directors for both the Diabetes Research Institute and Habitat For Humanity.

He has authored three books: “The Complete Game: Reflections of Baseball and the Art of Pitching” (2009), “Game 7, 1986: Failure and Triumph in the Biggest Game of My Life” (2016) and “108 Stitches: Loose Threads, Ripping Yarns, and the Darndest Characters From My Time In the Game” (2019).

Ron was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and attended Yale University where he was a two-time All-American, leading the Bulldogs to two Ivy League titles. He and his wife Joanna currently reside in Connecticut. He has three sons named Tyler, Jordan and Ronald.

Arranged by Paul Steinborn

The Economist has been published since September 1843 to take part “in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress”. It is considered to be neither right nor left, but a blend of the two, drawing on the classical liberalism of the 19th century and coming from what we like to call the radical centre.

One of its features is its annual forecast of issues and events that are likely to influence our experience of the new year, this year “The World in 2025.”

Daniel Franklin is currently serving as US editor, as well being executive editor, of The Economist magazine. He has been executive editor since 2006. From 2003 to 2019 he was editor of The Economist‘s annual publication on the year ahead (at the time called “The World in…”). Daniel published Megatech: Technology in 2050 in 2017 and his book on long-term trends, “Megachange: The World in 2050”, was published in 2012.

He joined The Economist in 1983 to write about Soviet and East European affairs. As the newspaper’s Europe editor from 1986 to 1992 he covered the great European upheavals, from the collapse of communism to the signing of the Maastricht treaty. After a stint as Britain editor he moved to the United States as Washington bureau chief, covering the first Clinton term. In 1997 he moved back to London as editorial director of the Economist Intelligence Unit. From 2006 to 2010 he was editor-in-chief of Economist.com. For the following four years he was business affairs editor, running the paper’s coverage of business, finance, science and technology. Before the pandemic he was diplomatic editor, shuttling between Washington and London.

Archaeological investigations throughout the northeastern United States have shown that the region has been occupied by Native Americans since the end of the Ice Age. In Fairfield County, archaeological digs have yielded evidence of this long tenure by these first occupants. Much of this evidence has been found by both professional and avocational archaeologists working in the area. This presentation will discuss the current state of our knowledge about the region’s first peoples and their cultural and technological adaptations to the changing natural environment of the Northeast. Artifacts from local sites investigated by students from the Norwalk Community College Archaeology Certificate Program will also be available for inspection. Attendees are encouraged to bring any Native American artifacts they have found in the area for identification.

Ernest A. Wiegand has been a professor of archaeology at Norwalk Community College since 1975, when the archaeology certificate program was designed to make archaeology accessible for the avocational archaeologist. He received a Master’s degree in anthropology from Hunter College and has also been active with the Archaeological Society of Connecticut as well as performing many compliance-driven archaeological and historical studies in Fairfield County Connecticut and Westchester County New York.

We all have our individual impressions of IBM, many from the 1960s, when the company was seen as the safest source of business processing support. Led for 40 years by Thomas J. Watson, Sr., as an enlightened source of mechanical computing capability based on punch cards. There would inevitably be challenges of corporate and family (and technological) succession. Tom Watson, Jr., became the internal champion of transitioning the firm to electronic computing. And he may have been the only person who could oppose his father in a company built on yes men; apparently, his own motivation to transform IBM was an  intense antipathy toward his father.

Marc Wortman, PhD, is a multi-award-winning independent historian and freelance journalist. He is the author of five books on American military, technology, and social history, most recently The Greatest Capitalist Who Ever Lived: Tom Watson Jr. and the Epic Story of How IBM Created the Digital Age (PublicAffairs, 2023). A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, it is the first solo biography of the leader who launched the computer revolution. The U.S. Military History Group named his previous book, Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power (Yale University Press, 2022), winner of the 2023 Captain Richard Lukaszewicz Memorial Book Award as the outstanding military history book of the year.

His other books are 1941: Fighting the Shadow War, A Divided America in a World at War (Atlantic Monthly, 2016); The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta (PublicAffairs, 2009), and The Millionaires’ Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented American Air Power (PublicAffairs, 2006). A feature-length documentary based on The Millionaires’ Unit is available on streaming services. 

Following college at Brown University, he received a doctorate in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. He lives with his family in New Haven. 

The Koh-i-noor Diamond is one of the world’s most well known diamonds. It is by no means the world’s biggest diamond, but it is by far the most infamous. Its storied history spans centuries-the Koh-i-nor has passed through the hands of many rulers, dynasties and empires in South and Central Asia, including the Mughal emperors of India, Persian Shahs, Afghan rulers and Sikh Maharajas, before ending up in the British Crown Jewels. This rich history and the curse it allegedly casts on male owners has added to its notoriety, mystique and fame. Its controversial “acquisition” by Queen Victoria has made its presence in the British Crown Jewels a subject of debate. India, Pakistan, Iran and even the Taliban have laid a claim to it.

Sunil Saksena’s presentation will recount some of its history and the myths and legends that surround it. It’s an amazing story.

Sunil  is a member of the Darien DMA and its past President. He was born in India in 1944 and received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology , Roorkee.

He worked at Union Carbide India before proceeding to the University of California, Berkeley in 1966 for graduate work. He received a masters degree in engineering as well as an MBA from Berkeley. Sunil worked as a mechanical engineer with 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 safely imbibe. For the majority of his career he was in finance, first as an international banker with Bankers Trust Company serving in Singapore, Mumbai and New York and later with Fidelity Investments from which he retired in 2004.

He and his wife  lived in Darien for  38 years and have just this year moved to Vermont.