Jessica Bibliowicz is president and CEO of National Financial Partners, a New York City-based independent financial services distribution system. She signed on as CEO when the company was formed with $125 million of capital from Apollo Management LP, a leveraged buyout firm.
Jessica is a graduate of Cornell University and the daughter of Sanford I. Weill, chairman and CEO of Citigroup. She lives with her husband and two children in Metro NY.
Alisa Cohn is founder of Alisa Cohn Coaching and is a Business Coach with more than ten years of professional experience in large and small corporate environments. Prior to starting her own company, her professional experience included working in the Middle Market Advisory Services Practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Alisa Cohn earned her MBA from Cornell University, where she was awarded the Fried Fellowship for Leadership and Academic Excellence. Alisa is also a Certified Public Accountant.
Michael Brown founded Brown & Michaels in 1980 with Ralph R. Barnard (now retired)as "Barnard and Brown". Brown was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1981, and is also admitted to practice in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He has prosecuted many patent applications in a wide variety of fields, from animal vaccines to computer software, avionics and automotive products, household appliances to radio communications.
Michael F. Brown received a degree in Industrial Engineering from Cornell University's College of Engineering. He also holds a law degree from Cornell University.
Kathryn Blume is Co-Founder of the Lysistrata Project, the first worldwide theatrical event for peace. She has toured The Accidental Activist - her critically acclaimed one-woman show about Lysistrata Project - to over 30 cities in the US and Canada, receiving an Austin Critics Table Award nomination. She is an Artistic Associate at Vermont Stage Company in Burlington, where her play Vanya/Vermont - a modern adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya - premiered in the spring of 2005. Kathryn's new solo show, The Boycott, premiered at VSC in January, 2007.
Her Off-Broadway credits include The Seagull, Mirandolina, and The Country Wife. Her Regional theater credits include Two Rooms, She Stoops to Conquer, A Child's Christmas in Wales, Sylvia, Waiting for Godot, A Streetcar Named Desire, Amadeus, June Moon, Antigone, Much Ado About Nothing, The Baby Dance, and Our Country's Good. Her Film credits include Deception, My Mother's Early Lovers, The Apartment, and Maybe It's Me.
In amongst her theatrical activities, Blume has had essays published in the books MoveOn.org's 50 Ways To Love Your Country, Code Pink's Stop the Next War Now, Outcry - American Voices of Conscience Post 9/11, and 365 Ways to Change the World. She has also had essays published in the weekly Seven Days and in Yes Magazine. Blume has worked for organizations such as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and Forest Watch. She founded Earth on the Air, a nationally-syndicated, award-winning environmental and social justice radio program, and was a company member of Living Voices, touring one-woman shows about the Holocaust and immigration to communities nationwide.
Blume co-founded The Hill Actor's Retreat Center and New Paradigms Personal Coaching Services, and has taught yoga, acting, Shakespeare, stress-reduction, and public speaking in venues across the country.
Kathryn Blume received her BA from Yale with a self-designed degree in environmental studies and theater.
Barbara Lindheim is co-founder and partner of GendeLLindheim BioCom Partners, LLC. Prior to founding that group, she was VIce President of Strategic Communications at Orchid BioSciences. She has also had management positions at Edelman Public Relations and Noonan/Russo Communications.
Barbara Lindheim received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University. She earned an M.B.A. with distinction from the Harvard Business School and an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.
Joseph DeSena has been an entrepreneur since the age of eight. From selling fireworks at age 8 to building a t-shirt business in high school to building a multimillion dollar pool business in college to creating a Wall Street trading firm that was sold to Tullett Prebon, DeSena is a living definition of the word 'entrepreneur'.
Joseph DeSena received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University.
Norb Mayrhofer is the Vice President of Procter & Gamble Professional. He began his career at P&G after graduation from college. His first role in the company was as a sales representative selling bar soap to supermarkets. Over the past 29 years of his career at P&G, he has had 18 different jobs in every P&G division with the exception of healthcare.
Norb Mayrhofer received his undergraduate degree in business from Geneseo State. He and his wife have five children.
Rachel Lampert has been the Artistic Producing Director for Kitchen Theatre since 1997. In addition, she is a playwright, director and choreographer. For the Kitchen Theatre Main Stage she has written Precious Nonsense (2005), The Book Club (2004), Waltz (2001), Lampert Variations (2000); adaptations of Frankenstein (2002) and The Trial (2004). For family audiences her plays include Emmett & Hambone, A December Suite, The Sisters Fitzenstarts, A Christmas Carol and with collaborator Lesley Greene - Science Fair, Fools! Schmools!; this season they will be adding The Odyssey, Winter Tales and I Have A Song To Sing O! Her play, Bet You Can't Catch It? was commissioned by AIDSWORK of Tompkins County as part of an educational program for teens. The piece toured Central NY for three years. Her trip to China in 1997 to stage West Side Story resulted in her writing The Soup Comes Last, which was produced at the Kitchen and off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters in Fall 2004. In addition to directing many plays at the Kitchen, she has directed and/or choreographed plays and musicals at Cal Rep, Arkansas Rep, Portland Stage Company, Public Theatre and Hawaii Opera Theatre. Lampert spent her early career in concert dance and founded a dance company in 1975 (Rachel Lampert & Dancers) that toured extensively throughout the US and in Europe for fifteen years. She is a 4-time recipient of NEA Choreography Fellowships, a CAP Individual Artist Grant and a SALT Award for Best Actress 2004. Her dance works have been in the repertories of numerous dance companies across the country and around the world. Raised in Brooklyn, she moved to Ithaca with her husband David in 1995. Rachel Lampert holds a BFA and MFA from New York University Tisch School For the Arts.
David Ahlers is a former managing partner and founding participant of Cayuga Venture Funds. In addition, Dr. Ahlers is a former Cornell tenured professor and holder of the Berens Chair of Entrepreneurial Management at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. While at Cornell, he was a Director of the Johnson School's Executive Development Program, Director of the Cornell Research Foundation which markets all Cornell intellectual property, and Director of Student Agencies, a privately funded corporation which helps enterprising Cornell students run businesses to work their way through Cornell.
Prior to coming to Cornell in 1972, Dr. Ahlers was a Vice President of Bankers Trust Company and head of its corporate planning activities. Dr. Ahlers left Cornell in 1985 to devote full time to DMA Associates, Ltd., an executive education and consulting firm in the financial services industry with a client list including Chase Manhattan, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America and M&T Bank, where he is currently a member of the Directors' Advisory Council for the Southern Region.
David Ahlers received his Ph.D. in management and computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. He received an MA in Operations Research from the University of Washington. His undergraduate degree is in physics from Ohio State University.