Board

Dr. Jane Aronson

Dr. Aronson is a board certified general pediatrician and pediatric infectious diseases specialist, and has been a practicing adoption medicine specialist for the past 12 years. She is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and the director of International Pediatric Health Services (IPH), which she opened in 2000. Since founding WWO in 1997, Dr. Aronson has visited orphanages in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Russia, and Latin America. Dr. Aronson and her partner Diana have three children: Hilary (adopted domestically), Desalegn (adopted from Ethiopia) and Ben (adopted from Viet Nam).

Anthony Benten

Tony Benten became vice president and corporate controller of The New York Times Company in January 2007. Previously Mr. Benten served as vice president and treasurer of the Times Company since November 2003, after becoming treasurer of the Company in November 2001. He served as assistant treasurer since September 1997 and as director of treasury since January 1997.

Before that, he held various positions at the Company including: manager of finance and pension investment, 1993 to 1996; supervisor of financial analysis and pensions, treasury
department, 1992 to 1993; senior financial analyst, Forest Products Group, 1991 to 1992, and financial analyst, treasury department, 1989 to 1991. Before joining The New York Times Company, Mr. Benten was an accountant at Deloitte & Touche LLP from 1987 to 1989.

Mr. Benten received a B.S. degree in finance from Louisiana State University in 1985 and earned an M.B.A. degree from Rice University in 1987, with concentrations in accounting and finance.

Meg Bode D'Ariano

Meg Bode D'Ariano is president of Bode & Associates, a public relations boutique that caters to the financial services industry. Meg has spent nearly 25 years in public relations, direct marketing and advertising, including 15 years on Wall Street. Most of her assignments have been focused on financial press relations and business to business communications, including multi-faceted corporate branding projects that include logo creation, web development, brochure production, and advertising, often with a wrap-around editorial media campaign. For the last 12 years, she has been involved nearly exclusively in the hedge fund industry. Meg is active with Worldwide Orphans Foundation on a number of fronts including helping with its press relations and as a member of the Gala Committee and the Capital Campaign Committee. At home, in Manhasset, NY, Meg lives with her husband, Carmine, and their two delightful daughters, Lily and Grace, both of whom were born in China. She is chairman of the Missions & Outreach Board, Congregational Church of Manhasset.

Karen Burnes

Karen Burnes has covered virtually every major news story since the fall of Vietnam. Currently working at the ABC News magazine, 20/20, she has also held virtually every job available in television, starting at the lowest level, and rising to anchor a CBS magazine show, "W. 57th" and run an ABC magazine show, "20/20 Downtown". Karen's passion, however, is investigative reporting. Among other things, she was the first journalist to reveal the Iran/Contra scandal and the existence of Oliver North; to expose Soviet subs leaking plutonium in the North Sea; and did an Emmy-award winning series called Children in Poverty. Ms. Burnes also spent months in Africa, covering the famines in the Sudan and Ethiopia for ABC's World News Tonight and Nightline. Those reports won her an Overseas Press Club award and an Emmy. Karen met and married a UN relief worker she met in the Sudan. Although they are divorced now, it was with his help, as head of UNICEF in Central Asia that she was able to adopt her beloved daughter, Katherine, from Kyrgzstan.

Cynthia Darrison

Bio coming soon

Lori B. Finkel

Lori B. Finkel resides in New York with her partner Andrew Cogan and three children, Jedidiah, Caleb and Aliyah. In addition to raising her children full-time, Lori is active in several fundraising, philanthropic and school-related endeavors. She currently serves as a member of the New York regional committee for Brown University’s $3 billion, five year capital campaign, is class captain of The Buckley School’s $50 million capital campaign and is class mother for the 3pm afternoon nursery school class at The Episcopal School. Lori has also been active in Learning Leaders, a tutoring program for the New York City public school system, the Student Sponsor Partnership Program and the Children’s Defense Fund.

From 1984 to 2006 Lori was an investment banker whose principal clients included the private equity community. Lori facilitated the financing of acquisitions through capital raising in the private and public debt markets, took her clients’ portfolio companies public,
and advised on divestitures, spin-offs, and add-on acquisitions Prinicpal clients included the Apollo Group, the Blackstone Group, MacAndrews and Forbes, Thomas H. Lee Partners, and Vestar Capital Partners, among many others.

Lori began her career at Drexel Burnham Lambert where she worked until 1990 when the firm went bankrupt. She then joined the Bankers Trust Company as Vice President in the Mergers and Acquisitions Group. In 1996, Lori left Bankers Trust to co-head the Financial Sponsors Group at Nationsbank. In 2000, Lori joined Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette as a Managing Director in the Leveraged Finance Group and stayed there and at DLJ’s successor,
Credit Suisse First Boston, until 2006.

Lori graduated from Brown University in 1984 with an A.B. in Art History and Economics.

Mary Knobler

Mary Knobler serves as the head U.S. high yield and distressed bond trader and assists in Oaktree’s other trading activities. Prior to joining Oaktree in 1995, she worked at Lehman Brothers where she was a high yield bond salesperson. Her previous experience includes four years at Kidder Peabody in high yield bond sales and four years at Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. in the syndicate and private placement groups. Ms. Knobler is a graduate of California State University at Northridge with a B.S. degree in Psychology. And an adopted mother to an Ethiopian child.

Steve Lerner

Steven Lerner is known for establishing innovative entertainment companies and developing cutting edge marketing campaigns. Currently he is involved in the creation of two new companies, artist ltd. and tinyOGRE Entertainment.

As former Co-Founder, President and CEO of Wind-up Entertainment, Lerner was instrumental in turning the start up, formed in 1996, into the largest independent record company in the world. The architect of Wind-up’s strategy, Lerner focused on generating multiple revenue streams for its artist roster while approaching each artist as a unique and long-term brand. Under his leadership, Wind-up became the first label to aggressively expand its relationships with recording artists through separate music publishing, band merchandise and touring agreements. Thanks to the success of Lerner’s visionary and aggressive marketing approaches, Wind-up is known for its stable of Gold, Platinum and multi-Platinum artists, including Creed, Evanescence, Seether and finger eleven.

Before Wind-up, Lerner was Founder, President and CEO of Castle Entertainment, a division of the publicly traded Alliance Entertainment. He successfully launched the company’s record label, which acquired other label and artist catalogs as well as new recordings from established artists.
He began working in the entertainment industry in 1990 as senior manager of the leading music wholesaler CD One Stop, helping boost the company’s revenues from $15mm to $250mm in five years. He simultaneously established Hard Core Marketing, an award winning company hailed for its unique and successful marketing techniques.

Lerner began his career in banking in 1986 at Citicorp and Chase Manhattan Bank. He received his Bachelors degree in Economics from Rutgers College and a Masters degree in Business Administration in Marketing from Fordham University.

Janet Maisel Kagan

Janet Maisel Kagan has over ten years experience in the financial services industry, having held various positions in the marketing and credit divisions of Société Générale, Deutsche Bank and Chemical Bank (now part of JP Morgan Chase). Her most recent position was as a Director of the Financial Institutions Group at Société Générale, where she was responsible for marketing the bank’s commercial and investment banking products and services to its financial institutions client base.

Ms. Kagan has an M.B.A. in Finance from N.Y.U.’s Stern Graduate School of Business, an M.A. in Clinical Psychology from the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. She is married to Howard Kagan and they have three children, Maxwell, Everett and Olivia.

Yvette Teofan

Yvette Teofan is a partner at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, where she has been practicing for over 18 years. Her practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions and private equity transactions. She has been resident in Cleary Gottlieb's Paris office and is a member of the bar Paris and New York.

Ms. Teofan holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. from Stanford University.