Peter Godwin, PEN President
Author/Journalist

2010 Guggenheim fellow Peter Godwin is an award winning foreign correspondent, author, documentary filmmaker, and screenwriter. Born and raised in Africa, Godwin studied law at Cambridge University and international relations at Oxford University. After practicing human rights law in Zimbabwe, he became both a foreign and war correspondent for The London Sunday Times and the BBC, and has reported from over 60 countries. The Industry of Death won the gold medal for investigative film at the New York Film Festival. He has written for an array of magazines and newspapers including National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Men’s Journal, and Vanity Fair (for which he was a 2009 finalist for the Michael Kelly award). Godwin is the author of six nonfiction books, including Mukiwa, which received the George Orwell Prize and the Esquire-Apple-Waterstones Award, and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa, which won the Borders Original Voice Award. His latest book is The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe. He has taught writing at the New School, Princeton, and Columbia.                                               

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman        
Fiction Author/Journalist

Joanne Leedom Ackerman is a novelist, short story writer, and journalist. Her works of fiction include The Dark Path to the River and No Marble Angels. She has published fiction and essays in nine additional books, including Short Stories of the Civil Rights Movement and Remembering Arthur Miller. A former reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, she has published articles in magazines and newspapers.  An emerita member of the board of directors of Human Rights Watch, Ms. Leedom-Ackerman has also served as chair of its Asia Advisory Committee. She is a Vice President of International PEN and was the International Secretary of International PEN and former chair of International PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee. She currently also serves on the board of directors of The PEN/Faulkner Foundation and Poets and Writers, International Crisis Group and the International Center for Journalists.

Annette Tapert
Nonfiction Author

Annette Tapert is the author or co-author of 11 books, including The Power of Style; The Power of Glamour: The Women Who Defined the Magic of Stardom; Slim: Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life and Swifty: My Life and Good Times (co-author with Irving Lazar) and Brothers’ War: Civil War Letters to Their Loved Ones from the Blue and Gray (editor). She is also a long-time style, fashion, and beauty writer; her articles appeared in Architectural Digest, Town & Country, Harper’s Bazaar, and House Beautiful and numerous other journals.         

John Oakes, Treasurer
Co-publisher, OR Books

Oakes is an editor and publisher, and co-founder of OR Books (www.orbooks.com) and the founder and director of the CUNY Publishing Institute (http://cpi.journalism.cuny.edu/). He started his career as a reporter for the Associated Press in New Orleans. Shortly thereafter, he joined Grove Press. In 1987, he co-founded an independent publishing company, Four Walls Eight Windows. He was publisher there from 1995 until its sale in 2004, when he became publisher of Thunder’s Mouth Press and co-publisher of Nation Books. He is the editor of the anthology In the Realms of the Unreal: Writings of the “Insane.”

Theresa Rebeck
Playwright/Writer for television shows

Theresa Rebeck co-wrote Omnium Gatherum (which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2003), and many other plays, including The Scene, The Water’s Edge, Loose Knit, The Family of Mann and Spike Heels . She has written for the TV shows Dream On, Brooklyn Bridge, L.A. Law, American Dreamer, Maximum Bob, First Wave, and Third Watch. She has been a writer/producer for Canterbury’s Law, Smith, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and NYPD Blue. She was the head writer and one of the executive producers for the NBC musical series Smash. Her first novel Three Girls and Their Brother was published in 2008.

Roxanne Donovan
Founder/President, PR Firm

Roxanne is President of Great Ink, one of the country’s leading real estate-focused public relations firms, a business she founded in 1992. Her firm represents the full spectrum of the industry—commercial, residential, finance, legal, construction, design, advisory, information services, and trade organizations in New York and nationally. In addition to securing controlled, steady positive media coverage for her clients, she’s expert in crisis communications, and is a trusted branding advisor for companies, and marketing consultant for their assets.

Roxanne ran the real estate and economic development beat for the New York Daily News Business Section, and served as National Senior Editor for Commercial Property News. She spent three years as Editor of Real Estate Weekly learning about the business and the City by interviewing industry legends. Roxanne also reported and wrote for consumer magazines and daily newspapers, including the Syracuse Herald–Journal, SPIN, and Hamptons Magazine.

Prior to forming Great Ink, Roxanne served as Director of Corporate Communications for the Edward S. Gordon Company, Inc., the predecessor to Insignia/ESG and CBRE, the country’s largest commercial real estate concerns.

Roxanne is a member of many professional, civic and philanthropic organizations, including ULI, WX and the National Association of Real Estate Editors. In addition, she serves as advisor to many prominent real estate and charitable organizations. She is a founding board member of Uniting Against Lung Cancer, the country’s largest private source of funding for innovative lung cancer research. Roxanne is a member of the New York Advisory Council for the News Literacy Project and a member of the International Governing Board of Delta Phi Epsilon sorority.

Morgan Entrekin
CEO & Publisher, Grove/Atlantic            

Morgan Entrekin joined Delacorte Press in 1977, where he worked with such authors as Kurt Vonnegut, Jayne Anne Phillips, Craig Nova, and Richard Brautigan. He moved to Simon & Schuster in 1982, where he acquired books by Richard Ford, Bret Easton Ellis, and Dr. Michael Debakey. In 1984 Entrekin left to start his own imprint at Atlantic Monthly Press. In 1991, Morgan acquired, with a group of investors, Atlantic Monthly Press. In 1993, he merged the company with Grove Press, publisher of Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, and Harold Pinter, among others. Entrekin is currently the CEO and Publisher of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.                                                              

Jeanmarie Fenrich
Law Professor/ED of Crowley Program at Fordham Law School

Jeanmarie Fenrich is an adjunct law professor and executive director of the Crowley Program at Fordham University School of Law. She serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Fordham Law Review, in addition to being the Africa special projects director at Leitner Center for International Law and Justice.  She is presently the secretary of the International Human Rights Committee, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.  Prior to this, she had worked as litigation associate in the law firm Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler LLP and as a law clerk at the Honorable John F. Keenan, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (1998-2000).

Jeammarie Fenrich graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, graduating with a B.A in 1993.  She also graduated magna cum laude from Fordham University School of law with a J.D in 1998.

Annette Gordon-Reed
Author/Professor

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School, and a Professor of History at Harvard University. She will be the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at Queens College, Oxford University during the 2014-2015 academic year. She received the 2008 National Book Award and the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family (2008). She is also the author of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997), Vernon Can Read!: A Memoir, with Vernon Jordan, Jr (2001), Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History, editor (2002), and Andrew Johnson (2010).

Her forthcoming publication is “The Most Blessed of Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of Imagination (with Peter S. Onuf). Her honors include the National Humanities Medal, a Guggenheim Fellowship in the humanities, a fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, a MacArthur Fellowship, and the National Organization for Women in New York City’s Woman of Power and Influence Award. Gordon-Reed was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011 and is a member of the Academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Samuel Heins
Lawyer

Samuel D. Heins has been a Minnesota lawyer for over 40 years.  Early in his career, he represented writers, artists and poets, including Garrison Keillor.  He also represented various labor union locals and trade associations.  More recently, he has been lead counsel in numerous securities fraud and antitrust litigation, recovering over $3 billion for his clients.  

He has been active in international  human rights practice, founding the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights in 1983, co-founding the Center for Victims of Torture in 1985, participating in trial observations in pre-revolution Romania, election observation in Pakistan and numerous individual representations including appellate representation of Guantanamo detainees.  

He has been politically active throughout his legal career, most recently as a member of the President’s National Finance Committee and as Chair of the Franken SuperPAC.  He has also been active in numerous political campaigns and is a member of the Board of the independent expenditure committee, WinMinnesota. 

He currently serves as a Board member of the Ploughshares Fund (San Francisco and Washington), WITNESS (New York), the Center for Victims of Torture (Minneapolis) and the A.C.L.U. of Minnesota. He is a co-chair of the capital campaign of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North and South Dakota. 

Tracy Higgins
Law Professor/ Co-Director at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice

Tracy Higgins has served as a professor of law since 2002 and has been associate professor of law from 1992-2002.  She is the co-director at the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice and has previously served as law clerk to Judge Levin Campbell at the U.S Court of Appeals for the First Circuit from 1990-1991. She has also served as the women’s law and public policy fellow at Georgetown University Law Center from 1991-1992, and followed this by being adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Spring 1992, with her principal subjects being: Feminist Jurisprudence, International Human Rights, Constitutional Law. 

Tracy Higgins graduated from Princeton with an A.B in 1986, magna cum laude and went on to complete her education in Harvard with a J.D in 1990, magna cum laude.                                                    

Sevil Miyhandar              
Fundraising Consultant                                                                               

Sevil Miyhandar joined CCS in 1999 and currently serves as Corporate Vice President & Managing Director of the firm.  She has experience working with international organizations, science research institutions, hospitals, social service, and national advocacy organizations.  She has assisted clients with fund raising, organizational development, leadership and major donor programs and training.  Sevil has raised millions of dollars on behalf of diverse social welfare causes from foundations, individuals, and corporations. Sevil has a degree in Political Studies from Bard College (B.A.) and also did undergraduate studies at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. 

Chris Oberbeck
Managing Partner, Saratoga Partners

Chris Oberbeck is Managing Partner and a founder of Saratoga Partners, a New York-based private equity investment firm. His investment and board of director responsibilities include Advanced Lighting Technologies, Inc., Emeritus Corporation, Koppers Inc., CEMA Lighting Products India Pvt. Ltd., and Memen Pharmaceuticals, LLC. Oberbeck has been a trustee since 1990 of a private foundation which donates primarily to education-oriented charities and scholarships. He started the Renaissance Scholars Fund at Exeter in 1997. He has been a member of the International Chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization for many years.

Tess O’Dwyer
Strategic planner/Fundraiser

Tess O’Dwyer provides strategic planning and fundraising counsel to cultural, civic, and social justice leaders of the nonprofit sector, such as Jazz at Lincoln Center, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, and WNYC Public Radio. Prior to launching her consultancy, O’Dwyer held leadership positions at some of New York City’s premier cultural nonprofits, among them: Director of Development at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Associate Director of Individual & Major Gifts at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Her performance was ranked in the top ten by the Association of Art Museum Directors in a survey of 200+ museums in the United States. Her record-breaking galas were ranked first in net revenue and top ten in style by Bizbash Magazine.

John Troubh
Troubh Partners, LP

John Troubh is co-founder and chief executive of Troubh Partners, a hedge-fund company established in 1996. His most significant philanthropic interests have included Union, Doctors Without Borders, the East Harlem School, and the New York City Parks Foundation, where he is a Trustee. Together with his wife Louisa, Troubh is a major supporter of the Albert Oliver Program, an educational and multi-service organization providing secondary school scholarships to African American and Latino students from New York City. His interest in the importance of literacy and literary education, particularly among minorities and the poor, drew him to the PEN American Center.                                                               

Davis Weinstock
Chairman, Clark & Weinstock (consulting Firm)

Davis is Chairman of Clark & Weinstock, a consulting firm for public affairs, with offices in New York, Washington, D.C., and Paris. Weinstock counsels leaders of governments and of large, complex organizations—including both multinational corporations and nonprofits—providing strategies related to the challenges and opportunities surrounding public affairs. He has been particularly active in counseling on various types of crises, as well as progressive campaigns and issues, and mergers and acquisitions.

As a writer and producer, Weinstock’s work has included a large number of films, series, and pilots for national networks and the BBC; three plays presented in New York; the feature film Tomorrow; and articles in numerous national publications. He has been president of the Board of Trustees of Hopkins School in New Haven and has headed the boards of the Nation Institute and CORO. He is a director of the W.E.B. Dubois Institute at Harvard University, New Visions for Public Schools, Apollo Inner-City Corporation, Impact Repertory Theater and the Flea Theater in Tribeca.