Category: Speaker Announcements (Page 27 of 27)

Donald P. Gregg

Donald P. Gregg currently is chairman of the Pacific Century Institute (PCI) in Los Angeles and chairman emeritus of The Korea Society in New York City.

Following graduation from Williams College in 1951, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and over the next quarter century was assigned to Japan, Burma, Vietnam and Korea. He was seconded to the National Security Council staff in 1979, where he was in charge of intelligence activities and Asian policy affairs.

In 1982, Gregg was asked by the then Vice President George Bush to become his national security advisor. He then retired from the CIA, and was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. During his six years with Vice President Bush, Gregg traveled to 65 countries.

Gregg also served as a professorial lecturer at Georgetown University from 1980-1989, where he taught a graduate level workshop entitled Force and Diplomacy.

In September 1989, Gregg began his service as the United States Ambassador to Korea. Prior to his departure from Korea in 1993, he received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, an honorary doctoral degree from Sogang University, and a decoration from the prime minister of Korea.

In March 1993, Gregg retired from a 43-year career in the United States government to become the president and chairman of The Korea Society. He has been chairman emeritus since 2009. In 2012 Gregg was appointed chairman of the Pacific Century Institute.

Gregg remains strongly interested in establishing normal relations with North Korea, a country he has visited six times. The Pacific Century Institute actively supports unofficial meetings between Americans with significant experience in Korea with North Korean officials. Gregg led a PCI delegation to North Korea in February 2014.

Gregg is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Recent awards include an honorary degree from Green Mountain College (1996), the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service (2001), Williams College’s Kellogg Award for Career Achievement (2001), the 2004 Bartels World Affairs Fellowship from Cornell University, and an honorary degree from Colorado College (2010). Gregg and his wife were honored in 2009 by the establishment of The Donald P. and Margaret Gregg Professorship at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. In July 2014, Gregg published a memoir entitled Pot Shards; Fragments of a Life Lived in CIA, the White House and the Two Koreas.

Alan J. Mathis

Since 2006, Alan J. Mathis has served as the President and CEO of Liberation Programs, one of Connecticut’s leading nonprofits providing prevention, education and treatment services for persons with substance abuse disorders and co-occurring mental health conditions.

Under Mr. Mathis’ leadership, the agency has increased the number of people served by 38%, reduced wait times for treatment, and expanded access to wraparound social services to include a transitional employment program, and increased access to primary medical care through partnerships with community health centers.

Working with the Board of Directors, the agency developed an 18-unit permanent supportive housing complex in Norwalk for women and their children. This also included renovation of a 7,000 square foot space for Liberation’s inpatient program for pregnant and parenting women. Mr. Mathis transformed Liberation into an organization that provides evidenced-based, targeted care for the 1,200 individuals seen every day while strengthening the agency’s business practices and management.

Mr. Mathis is a frequent speaker in the community. He is currently chairing Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling’s Affordable Housing Committee.

Prior to joining Liberation Programs, Mr. Mathis served as President and CEO at the Lower Eastside Service Center providing housing, primary medical, addiction and mental health services in NYC and served on NYC’s Mental Health and Hygiene Policy Advisory Board under Dr. Thomas Frieden, the current Director of the nation’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He holds a Master’s of Science in Public Policy and Management from the Averall Harriman College at the University of NY at Stony Brook. As a Sloan Fellow, he studied public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota.

He resides in Norwalk with his wife Melissa.

Gehr Brown

Bill Ryczek has written seven books on sports history — including a trilogy on 19th century baseball, books on the Yankees and Mets during the 1960s — and two books on professional football during the 1960s. He was also the co-editor of two reference books on 19th century baseball, and has taught The History and Social Impact of Baseball at Quinnipiac University. His books have won numerous awards, and he is a two-time winner of the Nelson Ross Award for his books on professional football.

His latest book, which he will talk about this morning, has the working title, Baseball on the Brink, The Crisis of 1968. This book discusses the sorry state of baseball during the mid-and late 1960s, how it was threatened by professional football, and dogged by inept management and a mind-set that was stuck in the passive 1950s in the midst of a time when American society was violent, divided and becoming increasingly oriented toward the decade’s rebellious youth.

Anyone who writes about 19th century baseball and minor league football needs a day job, and Bill is a former banker who is a principal in a finance company in Middletown, CT.

John P. Fitzgibbons, MD

John P. Fitzgibbons, M.D., M.A.C.P. is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is a Senior Advisor on Graduate Medical Education at the Stamford Hospital. He will talk about Presidential Health — Maladies, Myths, and Mistakes. This subject combines both medicine and history, and engages Dr. Fitzgibbons’s long-term interest in the subject of presidential health.

Dr. Fitzgibbons was born in Boston, MA and grew up in Syracuse, NY. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in 1960 and went on to medical school at the State University of New York, Upstate Medical Center. He did his first two years of postgraduate training in medicine at Boston City Hospital. He then spent two years in the US Public Health Service in the Department of Epidemiology at the Mayo Clinic. From there he moved to San Francisco where he did two more years of medicine training at the University of California at San Francisco. He returned to Boston to do a clinical and research fellowship in Nephrology at Tufts, New England Medical Center. In 1973 he went to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts to run the medical student program, in 1977 he became the Chief of the Nephrology.

In 1988 Dr. Fitzgibbons was appointed Chair of the Department of Medicine at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a position he held until June 2008. He was a Professor of Medicine at Penn State University School of Medicine and held the Leonard Parker Pool Chair of Medicine.

He is a former President of the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine (APDIM) and was also the Co-Chair of the Alliance of Academic Internal Medicine.

He was the Governor of the Eastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the American College of Physicians and President of the Pennsylvania Chapters. In 2008 he received a Mastership in the American College of Physicians (MACP).

From 2006 to 2012 he has been a member of the Accreditation Council in Graduate Medical Education’s Residency Review Committee (RRC) for Internal Medicine and in 2010 became a member of the Executive Committee. In April 2014 he received the Daley Founders Award from the Alliance of Academic Internal Medicine in recognition of his national accomplishments in medical education. He is presently a Senior Advisor in the Department of Medicine at the Stamford Hospital and a Professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Senator Bob Duff

Senator Duff represents the 25th Senatorial District, which includes Norwalk and a part of Darien.

A State Senator since 2004, he was a member of the State General Assembly from 2001 to 2004. Reelected to the Senate in 2014, he was chosen by his Senate colleagues in 2015 as Majority Leader. He is also Chair of the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee and Vice Chair of the Legislative Management Committee.

Senator Duff will discuss the recent legislative session with a focus on the State budget and transportation projects and issues.