Category: Members (Page 15 of 28)

Stephen “Steve” Larson

Steve Larson was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1958.  He grew up on the south side of the city and went to Marist High School where he played baseball.  He went on to receive an accounting degree from the University of Illinois in Champaign in 1980.  He is a certified public accountant who started his career at Arthur Andersen & co.  He continued his education at the University of Chicago where he received an MBA with a concentration in finance graduating in 1985.  He moved to New York and started a career in private equity.  He worked for ten years at CF Capital a merchant bank focusing on mergers and acquisitions.  He joined Cornerstone Equity, the private equity arm spun out of the Prudential, in 1997.  While semi-retired he continues to serve on the board of portfolio companies.  Steve and his wife Kate have lived in Darien since 1989 and have two adult children.  He is an avid sports fan and follows all “non-Cub” Chicago sports teams.   Steve is the former president of the Fairfield County Paddle Tennis League.  He is a member of the Silvermine and Woodway Country Clubs, and enjoys reading, golf, paddle and travel.

James “Jim” Patrick Garvin was born in the Bronx in 1948. He worked summers at Yankee Stadium selling hot dogs while attending Cardinal Hayes High School. Jim received a BS in Economics from the University of Dayton. He later received an MBA in Finance and Investments from Baruch College, CUNY, and a Post Grad degree in Accounting, NYU Stern Graduate School of Business. Jim is a CPA, having worked at Coopers & Lybrand in NYC. He worked for 30 years at Citigroup’s Corporate and Investment Bank. When his division relocated to Stamford in 1983, the family moved to Darien. For many years, he was an Adjunct Finance Professor at Fordham University Graduate School of Business at Lincoln Center. After 30 years at Citigroup, Jim changed careers. As University Bursar, for The City University of New York (CUNY), he is involved in setting tuition policies and related student matters.

For the past 25 years, Jim has been serving as an Admissions Officer for the United States Naval Academy. He was a Unit Commissioner for the CT Yankee BSA Council and the Andrew Shaw Memorial Trust Charter Organization Representative for the Darien’s Scouting Units.

Daniel Kolakowski was born in Hartford and raised in Wethersfield, CT. He received his BS in Civil Engineering in 1975 from the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado. He served in the military for five years at a Strategic Air Command base in Maine and left the service as a Captain.

Dan moved to Darien in 1980 and began his career with Skanska USA, a large international construction management firm where he became Senior Vice President. He received his MBA from the University of Connecticut. Dan was responsible for major construction projects in NYC, including the US Air Terminal at LaGuardia, Terminal One at JFK, all the AirTrain stations at JFK, Howard Beach and Jamaica, most of the new piers and parks in and along the Hudson River for the Hudson River Park Trust and the complete renovation of the United Nations Headquarters along 1^st Avenue. Dan retired in 2016, but still consults with Delta Airlines on construction projects at LaGuardia.

Dan and his wife Pam live in Darien and are active members of Noroton Presbyterian Church, where Dan has served as an Elder. They have two daughters (Julie Sweeney and Tracy King) and one son (Keith) and seven grandchildren. Both daughters live in Darien and their son lives in Orlando, FL. Dan’s interests include most sports, but especially golf, as well as traveling.

Tim Reis grew up on Long Island (Wantaugh, Syosset and mostly Garden City, with Yorba Linda, California briefly wedged in between).  He attended Fairfield University and graduated in 1983 with a degree in English.  Tim spent 35 years in the media business, selling advertising at magazines including Fortune and Forbes, founding an independent rep firm in Atlanta and ultimately spending 12 years at Google before retiring at the end of 2019.

Tim, his wife Patty and their two (adult) children have lived in Darien for 20 years.  Tim continues to guest lecture at Columbia Business School, he loves to travel, holds black belts in karate and aikido, is an avid gardener, golfer and an unsuccessful singer/songwriter (you can hear his work on Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, Apple Music, etc.).

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.