Board of Directors
Patricia Yarberry Allen, M.D.
Patricia Yarberry Allen, M.D., is a gynecologist, director of the New York Menopause Center, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medical College, and an Assistant Attending Obstetrician and Gynecologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital (1985-present). She is a board certified fellow of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Allen is also a member of the Faculty Advisory Board and the Women’s Health Director of The Weill Cornell Community Clinic (WCCC), a student-led initiative aimed at providing high-quality and equitable health care to uninsured individuals in New York City. She is a member of the North American Menopause Society.
The president and a founding member of the board of Women’s Voices for Change, Dr. Allen is a spokeswoman on women’s health. She was the inaugural speaker for the Iris Cantor Lecture Series on Women’s Health at the American Hospital in Paris, and has been interviewed by The New York Times, USA Today, regional newspapers and major television news programs on women’s health issues. Dr. Allen joined the board of the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum, a non-profit, literary event dedicated to showcasing renowned authors and interviewers in Louisville community, conversations then nationally distributed on PBS under the title “Great Conversations.”
Laura Baudo Sillerman
Laura Baudo Sillerman is president of a New York City-based charitable foundation and an active board and committee member for many educational and literary organizations, including the American Museum of Natural History, The 92nd Street Y Poetry Center and Poet’s House. She is a published author and poet.
Colleen Caslin
Colleen Caslin is currently Chief Operating Officer of Verdura, a venerable jewelry company which operates salons in New York City and London as well as Verdura boutiques in Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Betteridge Jewelers in the United States. Named Chief Operating Officer in 2008, Ms. Caslin has been responsible for the strategic brand development and growing the brand recognition. She is an active member of several industry organizations. Ms. Caslin was born in New York and graduate of Fashion Institute of Technology, Georgetown University, and St. John University.
Faith Childs
Faith Childs is a literary agent who represents writers of literary fiction and serious nonfiction, many of whom have won major literary and journalism awards. For more than two decades, she has headed her own agency in New York. Her representation includes these latest books: “Them,” by Nathan McCall; “Of Blood and Sorrow,” by Valerie Wilson Wesley; and “That Mean Old Yesterday,” by Stacey Patton. A lifelong reader and lover of literature in all its forms, she became an agent in order to make literature and the written word central to both her personal and professional lives. In the decade before becoming an agent, Ms. Childs was an attorney.
Ms. Childs is active in publishing education programs, particularly those designed to increase the representation of people of color in the publishing industry. She lectures frequently at university publishing programs, writers conferences, and graduate creative writing programs on the centrality of literature to our culture, the publishing industry, and the relationship between the writer and literary agent.
A founding member of Women’s Voices for Change, she has served on the boards of The New Press, the only non-profit press in the public interest, the Advisory Board of the New School University’s Creative Writing Program, and the PEN Open Book Committee.
Elizabeth Hemmerdinger
Elizabeth Hemmerdinger is a born-and-bred New Yorker as well as an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. She is the founder of “Behind The Scenes at Tisch,” a program dedicated to developing new works by new writers at New York University, where she received her MFA in 2003. Her plays have been presented in a number of venues in New York and Los Angeles as well as at the Williamstown Theater Festival and The Denver Center. Her full length piece Squall is available through Playscripts, Inc., which is also publishing a volume of her short works this fall. She is currently working with Larry Gatlin on a musical about Rosie the Riveter.
Hemmerdinger is a founding board member of Dancing Dreams, a program specially designed for children with physical challenges that focuses on establishing an environment where children, aided by a teenage volunteer, participate in the art of dance, giving them the chance to experience the pure joy of movement. She is affectionately known as “Grambo” to her five delicious grandchildren.
Lisa McCarthy
Lisa McCarthy graduated from Wheaton College in 1980 and began her career in sales. She worked at Ralph Lauren, Liz Claiborne, and Karen Kane, where she rose to the post of Vice President of Sales before she left to become a full-time mother to Matthew (now 17) and Alana (14).
A private pilot, Lisa works tirelessly on behald of ARF (Animal Rescue Flights), which promotes, plans, and performs the transportation of animals from overcrowded shelters to new homes with qualified families in other parts of the country. She and her husband Brian McCarthy, also a private pilot, reside in Manhattan and in Bridgehampton.
Currently on the Executive Committee of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Administrative Board, Lisa is also treasurer of the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons and a trustee at St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island, where Matthew and Alana are currently enrolled. She has also served on the board of the Nature Conservancy’s South Fork Shelter Island Chapter for over ten years, and has also been co-president of the board of Park Avenue Christian Church Day School.
Darlene Pasquill
Darlene Pasquill is a Managing Director of Credit Suisse in the Investment Banking division, based in New York. She is the NY Institutional Equity Branch Manager, a Key Account Manager, and a member of the Americas Equity Operating Committee. She served as a member of the Managing Director Evaluation Committee (MDEC) during 2009, 2010 and 2011.
Ms. Pasquill joined Credit Suisse in November 2000, when the Bank merged with Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette (DLJ). Prior to joining DLJ, she worked for the Stryker Corporation in San Jose, CA as an orthopedic marketing and manufacturing manager and at Owens Corning Fiberglas as a technical sales specialist in the Automotive and Marine industries.
Ms. Pasquill received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BS, with honors, from the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth. Ms. Pasquill is a Member of the Board of Directors for the Northside Center for Child Development, is active in HBS Reunion Fund Raising, and has participated in the Student Sponsor Partners Program. Ms. Pasquill is married, has a son, and resides in New York City and MA.
Elizabeth Poynor, M.D.
Dr. Elizabeth Poynor is a practicing gynecologic oncologist and pelvic surgeon in private practice in New York, focusing on cancer diagnosis, prevention and treatment. Dr. Poynor graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University in 1984. She then graduated from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1988 and completed her residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. Dr. Poynor completed her fellowship in gynecologic oncology in 1995 at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and remained on the surgical attending staff until July of 2006. While developing and maintaining a busy surgical practice as an Assistant Attending Surgeon at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Cornell Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences, she also obtained a Ph.D. in cell biology and genetics from Cornell. Dr. Poynor is Board Certified in Obstetrics and Gynecology and Gynecologic Oncology.
Kathleen Rogers worked at Bankers Trust in the late 1980s and early 1990s, first as a trader and market-maker in U.S. Treasury notes and bonds, and later as a proprietary trader of bonds, equities and currencies. In the 1990s, she shifted gears toward journalism, putting her financial background to work at CNBC and Time Warner Television. While raising her two daughters, now 7 and 12, she finds some time to write about finance and parenting.
Kathleen grew up in Northern California and attended Stanford University, graduating with a B.S. and M.S. in Industrial Engineering and Management. She holds an M.S. from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
Mary Kelly Selover, Executive Director
Mary Kelly Selover has been a writer and editor for national consumer publications for more than 20 years. While in her late twenties, she started a magazine aimed at the 50-plus demographic which grew within three years to more than 1 million subscribers. Mary Kelly has also served as a spokesperson throughout the U.S. for a Fortune 100 company and has consulted on numerous marketing and public relations efforts.
Catherine Wood, Chair
Catherine Wood works in New York City for AllianceBernstein where she is a senior vice president and portfolio manager as well as chief investment officer of Strategic Research, a division of AllianceBernstein. She lives in Wilton, Conn., with her three children.
