Category: Members (Page 13 of 27)

Jody Hotchkiss was born in New Haven in 1955 and grew up in Greenwich. He went to St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire. After failing his first pre-med course at Colby College he eventually graduated with a degree in art history.

He first eked out a living at the art book publisher Clarkson Potter, an imprint of Random House which became profitable only in later years when Potter published the first lifestyle books of little-known Westport resident Martha Stewart.

Jody left New York to volunteer in the Peace Corps building schools on the equator in Gabon, West Africa (and not a single day of his two years in Africa felt hotter than August in NYC).

Returning to New York Jody worked for studio boss Alan Ladd Jr. at MGM Studios, eventually becoming the VP of East Coast Production.  With the sale of MGM to Ted Turner, Jody sensed that regime change was coming when the Academy Award winning producer Richard Zanuck and his wife Lilly waltzed into Jody’s office at 1350 Avenue of the Americas and started to measure for drapes (Really!). Jody then worked as a literary agent at Sterling Lord finding articles, books and plays to sell for TV and movies such as THE DAY AFTER and GOODFELLAS. After his Darien next door neighbor from Kanter Fitzgerald died on 9/11, Jody questioned his own life/career and opened Hotchkiss & Associates Literary Agency in New York. Now with the name Hotchkiss Daily & Associates the company has celebrated its 22^nd anniversary, representing movies such as THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES, AMERICAN UNDERDOG: KURT WARNER,  AMERICAN GANGSTER and THE WIZARD OF LIES: BERNIE MADOFF. 

Jody has been married to his wife Kris for thirty four years (and friends still mix up their gender neutral names). He has three children—Sophie in Copenhagen, Graham in New York and Leah in Brooklyn. His grandchildren (so far) are Bjørn (7) and Ada (4).  Jody especially loves cycling in Switzerland and France, sailing in Michigan, and kayaking in Long Island Sound.

Preston Bealle was born in 1951 in Pelham Manor, NY. During school years, he moved to New Canaan and Los Angeles, with influential lessons from each. His father was vice president of the Los Angeles Dodgers, so he went to every game, often sitting in their box with Cary Grant, Annette Funicello, Jack Benny or other stars. After University of Arizona, he entered advertising in New York City with Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, working on Skippy, Hellman’s, Clorox, Hewlett Packard and many other accounts.

When the internet hit around 1997, Preston converted and became the first head of online advertising at any agency. He left the agency business and became founder and/or CEO at Jumbo.com, Babygear.com and Gorp.com, later merging each with larger companies. Retired, he is an active trader of weekly stock options. He decided in 15 minutes on their first date that he hoped to marry his wife, Kim. They had a large formal wedding on their 7th date and have been married for 43 years raising 3 kids who went K-12 in Darien.

A music buff, Preston has a lifelong fascination with the Everly Brothers, and his 12 year-old
face is still often seen on Ed Sullivan clips from the famous Beatles broadcast in 1964.

Samuel (Sam) Bird, Jr. was born in Stevens Pont, Wisconsin in 1937 and was raised in Dallas and New Orleans. He attended high school and college in Wisconsin, graduating from Marquette University in 1957 with a bachelor of mechanical engineering degree. He then received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1966. Before graduating, he served for two years in the U.S. Army in Germany.

Early in his career Sam worked for IBM as a Systems Engineer, as a management consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton, as a security analyst for Laird and Company, and as President of United Systems, a computer services firm. In 1980 he founded Bird Automotive, a designer and manufacturer of automotive accessories, headquartered in California and now in Connecticut. He continues the business on a reduced basis. Sam has served on the boards of San Francisco University High School, Wayfarer Church Foundation and Hadco Corporation.

Sam was married in 1987 to Cynthia Danieson Bird, who retired from teaching at Middlesex School in Darien in 2000. The Birds then moved to California for 11 years, returning to Connecticut in 2021. They have four sons, seven grandchildren, and attend St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Darien.

Daniel Lew was born in the Bronx, N.Y. in 1963 and is a first generation Chinese American. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1981, from Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science with a B.S. degree in computer science engineering in 1985 and from New York University School Stern School of Business with an MBA in finance in 1989. He earned his Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 1997.

Dan enjoyed a 30-year career in investments working at Equitable in NYC, Rogers Casey in Darien, William M. Mercer in NYC, Strong Funds in NYC, Citizens Advisers in Portsmouth, American International Group in Jersey City, and John Hsu Capital in NYC. He had a myriad of roles including portfolio analysis computer programming, performance measurement, client servicing, asset allocation, institutional investment consulting, security analysis, and portfolio management.

After leaving the Wall Street world in 2015, Dan decided to became a Main Street entrepreneur and was the first Connecticut franchisee for uBreakiFix, now the largest consumer electronics repair franchise in Fairfield County. In 2018, he sold the business and decided to “retire”.  Dan and his wife Fiona, a hemodialysis senior nurse clinician at NYU Langone, have lived in Darien since getting married in 1991 and have three daughters.  Dan is oftentimes found at the Darien YMCA swimming laps, playing pickle ball or in boxing fitness class. He is a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary, Stamford flotilla, and continues to be an active public and private equity investor. He enjoys cooking, fishing, golf, and playing craps.

Eugene (Gene) Luciana was born in 1941 and grew up in Steubenville, Ohio. He graduated from Franciscan University in 1963 with a B.S. degree in finance and accounting. He joined the Deloitte accounting firm and upon attaining his CPA certificate, he taught accounting at Franciscan University as well as at Kent State University. Gene subsequently became the chief financial officer and a Board member of Heritage industries in Chattanooga, Tenn. Through an acquisition, he became executive vice president, chief financial officer and a Board member of Chase Paper and Packaging in Greenwich, CT. After sale of the company to International Paper, he became the executive vice president, chief financial officer of Sunbelt Beverage Company, a leading wine and spirits distributor, which took him to Baltimore. 3 Mergers and acquisitions transactions were the main driver of Gene’s career. His most recent transactions involved the wine and spirits companies of the Wirtz family of Chicago, Illinois, creating Breakthru Beverage. He retired in 2021 as executive vice president, chief financial officer of Breakthru but remains on the Board of its majority owner.

Gene and his wife Betty Ann have lived in New Canaan as well as Darien for 35 years. They have six children. His interests include politics, the stock market, St. Thomas More Church, the New York Yankees, the NFL and Notre Dame football.

Bill Lacy was born in New York City in 1950 and grew up in West Hartford, Staten Island and Buffalo, New York. He graduated from the Loomis-Chaffee School in 1968 and spent his college years at Yale University, graduating in 1972 with a B.A. in history. During his high school and college summers, Bill worked as a day laborer at an Anaconda Copper factory, a runner on the American Stock Exchange and a moving man and truck driver for the Nationwide Moving Company, jobs that became the source of many (true) stories that his children find hard to believe. Following college, Bill sold computers for Burroughs Corporation and studied Arabic at Yale. A chance invitation to visit Chicago then led Bill to a 29-year residence in that city and its suburbs, where he met his wife, Ally, raised a family and worked in commercial and investment banking.  In 2004, Bill and Ally moved their family to Darien, where  he began a 13-year commute to New York, working in the fixed income group of J.P. Morgan’s Asset Management department. He retired in 2017. Bill has traveled extensively for work and for pleasure in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. His  interests include 19th century French literature, which he stumbles through almost every day with his schoolboy French, music of all sorts and travel with his wife and 3 children.

Ken Hamilton was born in Scotland, 15 miles south of Glasgow, in 1957. He lived there for 11 years before, over the next 6 years, living in Birmingham, the West Coast of Scotland and Manchester. He returned to Scotland to attend Edinburgh University, where he majored in Business and Accounting. He began his career with a merchant bank in London. In 1988, he moved to the US, together with his wife to be, to work in the bank’s Chicago office. In 1996, he moved to Darien, and began work in the bank’s New York office. He continued working in banking in New York until retiring in 2020. 

Ken and his wife, Flora Smeaton, have two children, Emma and Ross, both in their 20’s. 

Emma lives and works in Manhattan. Ross, while technically employed in Washington DC has been working from and living in Darien since his graduation, due to Covid.

Ken has been a lifelong sports participant and fan. Having attended 4 high schools and lived on 2 continents, he has had a shot at most sports that have existed, but his longest allegiance has been to soccer. He currently plays for Stamford FC. He recently took up pickleball and will go on a 5k run if forced.  He will play tennis and golf, if his partner’s expectations are low, and cards, if no money is involved.  Other pursuits include travel, reading, cooking, visiting doctors and filing his taxes. 

Born in 1953, I grew up in Atlanta and graduated from Princeton and the Wharton School (MBA).  After college, I married a high school classmate, and we decided to brave the challenges of late 70s New York City.  Conditions chased us away from the City, and we moved to Darien in 1980, where we have lived ever since, in the same house since 1984.  

I spent twenty years in the institutional fixed income business (Bankers Trust and Merrill Lynch) and subsequently co-found a technology start-up that developed internet-based applications for the bond market.  We sold the business in 2018, and we were dismissed from our duties in 2019, resulting in an involuntary (but ultimately welcome) retirement.  

Ginger and I have three children, born from 1983 to 1991.  Our oldest graduated from Washington & Lee and Dartmouth (MBA), has four children, works for Spencer Stuart, and lives with his family in Rowayton.  Our middle child graduated from Princeton, is a veteran of a number of successful start-ups, and lives in London with her husband and daughter.  Our youngest is a Yale grad, where he was captain of the lacrosse team.  He is partner in a small sports marketing firm and splits time between New York and Darien.

Ginger and I are active members of St. Luke’s Parish, members of Wee Burn, and both enjoy bridge and golf.  We own a vacation house in Sea Island, GA, where we spend 2-3 months per year.  I am a fanatical student of history and western civilization, as well as an aficianado of great spy and mystery fiction.

Mike Delaney was born in Boston in 1949 and grew up in Yorktown Heights, NY.  He attended Kennedy Catholic High School in Somers, NY and went on to Villanova University where he majored in accounting, graduating in 1971. After a stint in the army, he began his career with the accounting firm Ernst & Ernst and later with General Foods Corp. in White Plains NY. In 1985 Mike moved to UST Inc. in Greenwich where he served as General Auditor until 2009 when the company was bought out.  Mike and his wife Maricel moved to Darien in 1989. Mike has served as a Board member and Treasurer of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation for many years. He and his wife are members of the Country Club of Darien. They have five married children, all graduates of the Darien School System, spread out across the U.S. from New York to Seattle and four grandchildren.  Mike is a lifelong Yankees nut and a big fan of Big East basketball. He enjoys golf, bird watching, traveling and spending time with his grandchildren. 

Chester L. Cobb (“Chet”) was born in New York City in 1952 and grew up in the suburb of Pelham Manor, New York.   He graduated from Pelham Memorial High School in 1970, where he was co-editor-in-chief of the school newspaper and played varsity soccer and tennis.  He graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in 1974 with a B.A. in economics and was editorial editor of the Yale Daily News.  He received his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1977.  After graduation from law school, Chet began his legal career as an associate at Milbank Tweed in New York City.  He was an associate and then a partner at Winstead McGuire in Dallas, Texas between 1984 and 1990.  Chet and his wife Mary Kay moved to Darien in 1990, when Chet joined Phillips Lytle as a partner in the firm’s New York City office.  He has practiced law at Phillips Lytle during the past 31 years until retiring at the end of 2021.  Chet served as partner-in-charge of the firm’s New York City office between 1992 and 2007 and as a member of the firm’s governing committee.   Chet and Mary Kay have three daughters, two of whom are married and reside in Darien and Denver, Colorado, and one of whom is unmarried.   They also have three grandchildren.  Chet is a member of the Country Club of Darien.  His interests include reading, travel, golf, racquet sports, spending time with his family and skiing.        

Stephen (Steve) Liguori, and his wife Susan have lived in Darien for 20+ years. Steve was born in Brooklyn, moved to upstate NY and post college lived in Wisconsin, California (2X) and Texas, before settling in Darien. He has a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and an MBA from the University of Southern California. They have three children: a daughter and two grandchildren living in Washington, DC, a son in Chicago and daughter in Oakland, CA. Susan is a Clinical Pastoral Educator, which means she trains and certifies all denominations of religious, to give spiritual care in hospitals, nursing homes, etc. They are both long time members of St. John’s of Darien.

Steve served as GE’s Executive Director – Global Innovation when GE was headquartered in CT. He was instrumental in GE’s then highly regarded Innovation efforts such as the digital “Industrial Internet” transformation. Also, at GE he was a marketing VP in GE Capital.

Prior to GE Steve held senior Advertising, Marketing and Strategy roles at Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Kraft Foods. He even ran a cookie company for a short time.

Steve is the Founder and CEO of Liguori Innovation, a boutique consulting firm that helps large firms transform their leadership to enable new sources of growth. Steve is also Co-Founder of the Corporate Entrepreneur Community or “CEC” with Eric Ries, best-selling author of The Lean Startup. The CEC is a private peer-to-peer network of large enterprises. 

Steve’s distinctions include being named Marketer of the Year, a published article in the Harvard Business Review, and Chairman’s Award winner at both Citigroup and General Electric. And yes, he launched the original Super Bowl Halftime show with none other than Michael Jackson!

Douglas (Doug) A. Bora, Jr. was born in 1953 and grew up in Rowayton. He graduated from St. Lawrence University and earned a B.A. in Economics. After graduation, he worked in commercial real estate finance to develop major real estate projects throughout the nation, working broadly as a lender first, an intermediary second and a principal third. He started his career working at the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York (MONY, now AXA Insurance) where he was in charge of real estate lending and acquisitions for the Northeastern United States and then worked in Citicorp’s Investment Bank where he ran institutional finance and acquisitions in the Midwestern U.S. Following that, he worked as an intermediary at the nation’s largest commercial mortgage banking company, Holliday Fenoglio Fowler (now JLL, Jones Lang LaSalle), and finally as Managing Director of Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, a major commercial and residential real estate development firm. 

Doug and his wife have lived in Darien since 1989, have two adult children and two grandchildren. He has served as Chairman or President of several real estate industry trade associations in New York and Connecticut and as Chairman of SoundWaters, a non–profit organization which teaches over 35,000 young people each year and connects them with Long Island Sound to protect and preserve the Sound through education. Doug is an avid boater and a member of Noroton Yacht Club. He enjoys skiing, pickleball and gardening and is believed to be the longest continuous seasonal paddle tennis player in Darien (over 30 years).