Who We Are

Our Advisory Committee is composed of distinguished historians and national leaders who have enlisted in our mission, provide counsel to the board on key decisions, and make recommendations for the advancement of our work.

CURRENT ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Joan K. Davidson

President Emeritus, The J.M. Kaplan Fund

Ambassador William vanden Heuvel

Founder of The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute

Geoffrey C. Ward

Historian, Screenwriter, and Roosevelt Biographer

Alice Waters

Chef, Author, and Food Activist

Margaret Jay

The Rt Hon. the Baroness Jay of Paddington

Steven J. Israel

Former U.S. Congressman and director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University

Ted Widmer

Historian and Presidential speechwriter

DIRECTORS

KEVIN BURKE is a historian and filmmaker who serves as the director of research at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Burke graduated from Harvard College in 1998 and from Harvard Law School in 2003. He received his master’s degree in History and Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard in 2004 and 2006, respectively.

A native of the Hudson River Valley, Burke is a member of the New York State Bar, and serves as president of the Downing Film Center in Newburgh, New York, chair of the Greenway Conservancy of the Hudson River Valley, vice-chair of the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area Management Committee, a trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, and chair of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Hyde Park Foundation.

EILEEN COSGRIFF is a Program Manager for Santander Bank in Boston, MA. She leads the US Project Management Office’s business analysis and UAT practices. Prior to Santander, Eileen worked at Deloitte & Touche LLP and Fidelity’s National Financial Services. In addition to work in financial services, Eileen has field experience in architectural history studying Thomas Jefferson’s designs and building methods at Poplar Forest, VA as well as rebuilding homes in New Orleans, LA under the sponsorship of World Monuments Fund. Eileen has a master’s in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University and a BS in Finance from Providence College. She also volunteers with local community redevelopment organizations, as well the Old North Church, Boston, MA where she and her co-gardeners received the Good Neighbor award in July 2017 for tending to the 18th-century reproduction garden.

ERIN HOAGLAND serves as the Director of Conservation for the Dutchess Land Conservancy. She is a lifelong resident of the Hudson Valley with an affinity for the natural world. After graduating from Marist College with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science and Policy, she started a career in land conservation. Erin has been able to apply her passions by working to implement and manage conservation projects on both natural lands and working farmland that protect Dutchess County’s invaluable scenic resources. Erin joined the FDR Hyde Park Foundation Board in 2017.

JOHN WINTHROP (WINT) ALDRICH retired from a career in N.Y. State government and continues his life-long activism in land conservation and historic preservation, especially in the Hudson River Valley. A graduate of Harvard College who served as an Army officer in Vietnam, from 1974 until 2010 Wint held posts on the executive staffs of the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation – in the latter agency as the State’s Deputy Commissioner for Historic Preservation. Also, Wint has served as a consultant to the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, a unit of the National Park Service.

He is currently a Governor’s appointee to the State Board for Historic Preservation and the Hudson River Valley Greenway Communities Council. Wint was president of the Hudson River Conservation Society (1974-84) and founding president of Wilderstein Preservation in Rhinebeck, N.Y. (1980-88). Wint and his wife live in Albany and at Rokeby in Red Hook, N.Y.

CHARLES BUICE serves as President of Tiger Foundation in New York City. The foundation works to help break the cycle of poverty for New York City families by investing in nonprofit human service organizations in the education, employment, youth and families, and criminal justice fields. Previously, Charles worked in the magazine publishing business in San Francisco and New York City. Charles also serves as a Trustee of The Steele-Reese Foundation and is on the board of A Public Space, a nonprofit publishing enterprise, and of Philanthropy New York, a member organization serving the foundation community in and around New York City. Charles has a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the Stern School of Business at New York University.

EVAN JENKINS is an architect and property investor who serves as director for real estate technology at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. He is also currently a research fellow at CURE, Columbia’s Center for Urban Real Estate. Evan received his architectural degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2007. He also completed a master’s course in the history and theory of architecture at the Architectural Association in London in 2003.

His work experience includes six years in design and project management at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York and five years as a project architect at Johnson Fain in Los Angeles. He is co-owner and principal of OVERARCH, a California Professional Corporation engaged in the design, development and management of mixed-use and multifamily property in New York and Los Angeles. A native New Yorker, Evan is also a member of the American Institute of Architects and the Urban Land Institute.

Born in 1951, David Schwartz grew up in New York City. In 1972, he received his B.S. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance. Following graduation, David began his career with Mikasa, a leader in the Tableware and Housewares industry – first in sales, then in management and as a company principal. Following the company’s initial public offering on the NYSE, David retired from the firm in 1996 and has since made his livelihood as a private investor. Recently, he’s become an active member of the Hudson Valley Start-up Fund, an Investment group that seeks to enable a stronger business ecosystem for entrepreneurs in the Hudson Valley region.

David lives at “Windridge”, a 130 acre former dairy farm (now mostly forested), in Hyde Park, New York. The land adjoins the Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site.

David serves on the Boards of several Hudson Valley non-profits, including the Children’s Home of Poughkeepsie, the Vassar Haiti Project, and the Mid-Hudson chapter of Mensa.

G. DAVID PHELPS HAMAR is a Managing Director & Head of Wealth Advisory Services at Chilton Trust. Mr. Hamar advises individuals, trusts, and foundations on a wide variety of financial matters, including portfolio construction, philanthropic advisory, and tax and financial planning.

Mr. Hamar is the Founder and Chairman of the Brantingham Preservation Group in the western Adirondack Park, is a Director and Treasurer Emeritus of Virginia Polo at the University of Virginia, and served on the Steering Committee for the formation of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia.

Mr. Hamar is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law (1990) and Old Dominion University (1983). Mr. Hamar is admitted to the Virginia State Bar and is a CPA. He resides in Manhattan, Onteora Park, and Brantingham, New York.

CANNON CARR is Chief Investment Officer for CornerCap Investment Counsel. Prior to joining CornerCap, Cannon was a senior equity analyst at CIBC World Markets (1998-2007), covering IT business services, wireless services, and emerging telecom. Cannon has provided commentary on CNBC, CNN, Lou Dobbs MoneyLine, and Bloomberg News. He has also been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Fortune, among other publications. Cannon has an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from Princeton University in Political Economy.

He heads the investment committee for the Wesleyan College endowment, is Chair for the Advisory Board for the Center for Ethics at Emory University, is a Board member with the Technical College System of Georgia Foundation, is an officer at the Atlanta Rotary Club, and serves as Chair of the Georgia Tennis Foundation, among other nonprofit endeavors.

RUDOLPH S. RAUCH is a retired journalist and magazine editor. After graduating with a degree in English from Princeton University in 1965, he worked for two years at Radio Free Europe in Munich, Germany, then attended the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1969, he joined TIME Magazine, where he covered Wall Street; served as European Economic Correspondent, based in Bonn, Germany; was a correspondent in the magazine’s Saigon Bureau for fourteen months; and then spent three years covering South America for TIME, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Following a two-year stint as TIME’s Atlanta Bureau Chief, Rauch returned to New York as Deputy Chief of Correspondents. In 1980, he was named the Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and later was Assistant to the Chairman of Time, Inc. Rauch has also served as editor of the quarterly magazine CONSTITUTION, and from 1998 until 2003 was Editor of OPERA NEWS. A long-time director of Scenic Hudson, Inc., Rauch is currently on the board of the Scenic Hudson Land Trust, the Hudson Highlands Land Trust, and the non-profit weekly newspaper, THE HIGHLANDS CURRENT. Rauch is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and lives in Cold Spring, NY.

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