Category: Members (Page 14 of 27)

Howard Zipser is a lawyer specializing in the area of land use and zoning and has worked on many of the largest and most complicated zoning approvals in New York City. Included in this list of projects are the Hospital for Special Surgery expansion over the FDR Drive as well as the Citigroup Center.

Howard received his B.A. from John Hopkins University in 1962. He attended law school at Washington University School of Law receiving the J.D. degree in 1966 and his LL.M. in 1968. Howard is a past Vice President of the NY Junior Tennis League and the current President of Inside Broadway, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing the theater arts to public school students. He has been married to his wife Marsha for 54 years and has two children living in southern Connecticut and four grandchildren.

Clyde White grew up in Granby Massachusetts, a small town 90 miles west of Boston. He attended Northfield Mount Hermon School and Tufts University where he earned a degree in economics and played varsity soccer.

Since his teenage years he has been fascinated with markets so he went to Wall Street and joined the equity derivatives department at Paine Webber. He spent many years there and later at Morgan Stanley and participated in the enormous growth of the derivatives markets from the early days of listed options to
the wide range of sophisticated products we trade today.

He volunteers for a group called No Labels whose mission is to foster civility and bi-partisanship in Washington – not an easy task. He and his wife Carter have lived in Darien for over 30 years and they belong to the
Country Club of Darien. They have two sons. One is a programmer living in Austin Texas and the other is a rocket engineer living in Los Angeles California. Clyde enjoys playing golf, skiing, and playing chess.

William G. (Randy) Tankoos was born in New York City in 1947 and his family soon moved to Old Greenwich and then 18 months later to Darien where he has lived ever since. He graduated in 1965 from Canterbury School and in 1969 from Yale College with a BS in Administrative Sciences. He later received an MBA from University of Bridgeport. Drafted in 1970, he served in the Army for nearly two years at Fort Dix. On discharge he worked for a yacht rigger before purchasing a metal fabricating business in Stamford. After ten years as an entrepreneur, he sold that business and has since been with the AH Emery Company (currently Emery Winslow Scale Company).

In 1976 Randy married Linda Herdich and they have two sons, Ryan and Grant. Ryan and wife Loni are the proud parents of his two grandsons Ronan and Logan. Linda and Randy were divorced in 2006.

Randy has sailed extensively offshore on large boats since he was 13. He was the youngest crew member at 15 for the 1962 Bermuda Race, paired with the eldest woman on that race, aboard Cotton Blossom IV. Since then, Randy has completed a dozen or more Newport to Bermuda Races, several Annapolis-Newport and Marblehead-Halifax races, and several SORC circuits. His longest offshore trip, 15 days at sea, was with his son Grant to deliver a 40’ boat from Charleston, S.C., to Canouan in the Grenadines.

Randy has been a member of the Storm Trysail Club, New York Yacht Club, Norwalk Yacht Club and Noroton Yacht Club where he served as Commodore between 2011 and 2013. In that role, he worked the club out of the destruction caused by Irene and Sandy and was co-chair of the Building Committee to build a new clubhouse. He continues to share and sail a 23’ Sonar at Noroton. When not sailing he has a 28’ power boat to cruise extensively on the east coast and Hudson River/Lake Champlain.

Ric Grefé, until recently the Design Thinker in Residence at Williams College, works at the intersection of business, society and creativity, applying the craft and optimism of human-centered design to the intractable challenges we face today.

Ric is director emeritus of AIGA, the professional association for design, which he led for 20 years. Prior to AIGA he served in naval intelligence in Asia: was a journalist with AP and Time; had his own consulting firm in urban design and public policy; and led legislative strategy and strategic planning for public television and radio in Washington, DC. He has an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth and an MBA from Stanford.

Currently, he serves as board chair of Britain’s Royal Society of Arts in the US. Ric is just down-right curious, so it’s hard to list a finite set of interests.

Ric is married to Karen Vogel, who is an artist and landscape designer (and formerly very active in the DCA Greenhouse). Their two grown children both graduated from Darien High School. They have lived in Darien for 25 years.

Thomas J. Ross was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1954, grew up in Darien and graduated from Darien High School in 1973. He received a BS in Economics from the University of Dayton in 1977 and an MBA from Pace University in 1981.  He has had a long career in the financial services industry starting in retail banking and then product management with Citibank and EF Hutton.  He then joined the Stamford office of Shearson Lehman Brothers as a Financial Advisor in 1991.  He stayed with the company as it morphed into many different firms until it became Morgan Stanley where he is now a Senior Vice President.  Tom is a lifelong sailor and a long-time member of the Noroton Yacht Club and the Darien Boat Club.  Tom has been active in town where volunteered at Hindley school, spent many years on the town’s RTM and was on the Board of the Darien Community Association (DCA) and a member of their investment Committee.  He has been an active volunteer at the Noroton Yacht Club where he was most recently the Commodore.  He and his wife, Anne, have three children and enjoy sail boat racing, cruising on their powerboat, tennis and paddle tennis, reading, playing bridge and trying to learn Golf.

Jeff Neubert was born in Dixon, Ill., in 1942. He moved from Dixon to Indianapolis to Rochester and finally to Connecticut in 1959. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1964 with a BBA degree and the following year earned an MBA from Babson College. Jeff began his business career as a marketing executive with General Foods in 1965. He moved to Citigroup in 1974 where he held various positions in retail banking, credit cards, mortgage banking, and strategic planning. He joined Bank One/JP Morgan Chase as Executive Vice President and concluded his career as CEO of The Clearing House from 2000 until 2010.

Jeff moved to Darien in 1969. He has three children and seven grandchildren. He is a member or Wee Burn. Jeff enjoys golf, bridge, reading, exercise and, most of all, his family.

David (Dave) Cator was born in Portland, Oregon on December 10th, 1952. At a very young age his family moved to the San Francisco Bay area, living in Menlo Park, Calif., and later to a small town, Portola Valley. He graduated from Woodside High School in 1971 and from the University of California at Berkeley in 1975.

Dave’s first job was working for a New York-based publisher and later a regional newspaper before being hired by Sunset magazine in 1979. Dave worked as an executive in the magazine publishing industry for the next 40 years, with magazines such as Smithsonian and Inc including 23 years at Time Inc.

Upon his retirement from publishing in January, 2020, Dave worked to earn his certification as a Recovery Coach, helping those who are on their recovery journey.

Dave has three daughters and has lived with his wife Susan in Darien for the last 28 years. Dave loves his family time, vacations, exercise, golf and his Labradors. He is a member of the Wee Burn Country Club.

John Griswold grew up in Greenwich, Conn. He attended Greenwich Country Day School and Pomfret School, graduating in 1963. He earned a B.A. in English Literature at Yale University in 1967 and played varsity soccer, intramural hockey and was fullback on the Yale Rugby Club’s first fifteen. Following graduation from Yale he taught English and Reading at Middlesex  Junior High School in Darien and coached the soccer team. In 1971 he joined an advertising agency in Greenwich, and later moved to New York where he worked on the American Express account at Ogilvy and Mather. In 1985 he changed careers, joining a small financial advisory partnership in Stamford organizing and marketing a hedge fund of funds. In 1992 he joined Commonfund as head of Client Services, Research and Publications. He founded Commonfund Institute in 1999, serving as its Executive Director developing investor research studies and running nonprofit institutional investor education at the Endowment Institute at the Yale School of Management. John retired from Commonfund in 2016 but continues to consult with higher ed and foundation boards and investment committees.

John lives with his wife Chichi in Stamford and belongs to the Yale Club of New York and the Black Hall Club in Old Lyme, where he has a second home. He enjoys travel, boating, golf, bicycling and paddleboarding.

Rodger F. Smith was born and raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin in 1941. He is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin with a B.S in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in finance. He has been Chair of the Dean’s Advisory Board of the Wisconsin School of Business. He was also Chair of the Trust Advisory Committee of Tau Beta Pi (the engineering honorary fraternity) for 34 years. He has also led the Investment Committee for the 401(k) plan for Greenwich Associates and recently joined the Investment Committee of his fraternity foundation.

After 10 years working for the CFO at Allis Chalmers in Milwaukee, Rodger moved his first wife (deceased in 1999) and three sons to Darien in 1976. He joined Charley Ellis to help found and grow Greenwich Associates, a research and consulting business, where he worked with asset management firms, including PIMCO. He also founded Greenwich Associates’ business in Canada and London.

Rodger and his second wife Masha have lived in Tokeneke since 1986, where he is currently President of the Tokeneke Tax District. His three sons live in Darien, Wilton, and New York City. He is a member of Wee Burn Country Club, The Yale Club of New York City, and the Tradition Golf Club in Palm Springs. Rodger is an avid golfer and is working on a book about his family going back to the 1800s. His interests include investing, public affairs, travel, Green Bay Packers, and the Wisconsin Badgers.

Sponsored by Jim Phillips

Joe Roxe grew up on Long Island.  He graduated from Chaminade and Princeton University before enlisting in the Navy in January 1959.  After three and a half years as a gunnery and anti-submarine officer aboard a destroyer based in Newport, RI, he left the Navy, received an MBA from Harvard Business School, and joined Mobil Oil in New York.  He spent 23 years with the company in a variety of management roles in London and New York before leaving Mobil to become a partner at Johnson & Higgins, the world’s largest private insurance broker.  He left J&H in 1997 after helping to negotiate the sale of the firm to Marsh & McLennan.  He continues to be active as Chairman of Bay Holdings, a private investment holding company and The Roxe Foundation.  Joe has been happily married to Maureen since 1965.  They have three children and eight grandchildren living in Boston, Baltimore and Connecticut.

He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Navy War College Foundation and as a board member of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and as a Dean’s Council at the Harvard Kennedy School of Public Policy. He is a past President of Wee Burn Country Club.  Governor Jodi Rell appointed him Chairman of the State of Connecticut Investment Advisory Council in Hartford to oversee the $26 billion of investments in the State Teachers and Employees’ pension plan.

Joe is a Knight of Malta and a Papal Knight in the order of St. Silvester. 

Scott Reardon was raised in South Dakota. In college he ran Georgetown Free University, Co-Chaired GU’s International Association of Students in Economics and Commercial Sciences and was elected the first student on Georgetown College’s governing council.  After receiving a Masters degree in Business he joined Dakon-Dakota Iron, his family’s firm, wholesaling to 5,000 Midwest retailers.  Later he became its president.

In 1980 he launched the first of twenty self-funded startups, initially in broadcasting, as an owner and operator. In 1987, Scott began to buy, build and operate cellular telephone systems.  Moore’s Law, doubling microchip capacity every 18 months, implied that mobile phones would become universal. Later he launched a national wireless network offering vital last-mile broadband services to Fortune 1000 and small and medium businesses. Scott’s current primary focus is on business-to-business cloud-based software startups.

Scott and his wife, Rosemarie, moved to Darien in the early 1990s, raised four great kids and currently spoil three grandchildren. His interests include art, especially modern, history, public affairs, poverty alleviation and economics. His service to nonprofits include multiple terms on Georgetown University’s Board of Regents and twenty years as Chairman of the Deutsche Bank Microcredit Development Fund.

Sponsored by Jim Tulacro & Gary Banks

John P. (Jack) Dearie, Jr. was born in Mt. Lakes, N.J. in 1950 and is a graduate of Georgetown University (1972) and Fordham Law School (1978). While at GU, he was active in the Mask & Bauble Drama Society and was also the leader (Ephus) of the Georgetown Chimes. He has served on the Board of the GU Metropolitan Alumni Club and is a frequent attendee at GU basketball games and related alumni events.

Jack retired in May 2020 after a 42-year legal career as a corporate regulatory lawyer in private practice, most recently as a partner with the Locke Lord, LLP law firm. He is a member of the NY and CT bars.

Jack and his wife, Patrice, have lived in the same house on Birch Road in Darien since 1980. They have two daughters, Farrell and Kelly, who went through the Darien School system and were both collegiate swimmers, now living in New York City and Sudbury, Mass., respectively. They also have two grandchildren, Isabel and James.

Jack and Patrice are active members of St. Thomas More Church. They are also members of the Darien Boat Club and members for 35 years of the Middlesex Club, where Jack has served on the board and currently plays on the paddle and tennis teams. His other interests include kayaking, boating, theater, hiking, reading, travel, all NY sports teams, and his current passion, pickleball.