People

Kristin Aguilera is the Museum's Deputy Director. She also runs the communications department and has been the editor of Financial History magazine since 1997. She holds a BA in Journalism from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and an MS in Magazine Publishing from New York University.

Jeanne Baker Driscoll, Director of Development, has been a fundraising professional in New York for the past 12 years, most recently with the Smithsonian Institution.  Prior to her non-profit work she was an art dealer and university administrator.  A graduate of the University of Minnesota, she also studied at the Wharton School and has two graduate degrees from The Pennsylvania State University.

Arturo Gomez is the Business Manager of the Museum. He also functions as accounting/human resources manager and events planner. His past experiences and affiliations include Teachers College Innovation, Baseline Financial Services (a Thomson Financial company), Mitsubishi International Corporation and International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Arturo was born and raised in Southeast Asia.

Linda Rapacki has been the Museum's Managing Director of Visitor Services and Building Operations since January 2008. She received her extensive knowledge about customer relations, training and project management though her careers at The New York Mercantile Exchange and Cablevision Systems.

Charlotte B. Beyer is founder and CEO of the Institute for Private Investors, a private membership organization offering non-commercial investor education and an online community to 1,100 investors in 18 countries and 40 U.S. states. IPI designed the first private wealth management program in the country and continues to collaborate on weeklong investor programs with The Wharton School and Stanford University. In 2004, Ms. Beyer created the Investor Education Collaborative to provide experiential education on the “process” of wealth management as contrasted with technical theories or investment products. Prior to founding IPI, Ms. Beyer spent 20 years in financial services. She has been a member of the Museum’s Board of Trustees since 2009.

Stephen Cooper entered the insurance business in 1973 with Aetna Life and Casualty as a brokerage representative in Brooklyn, New York. In 1981 he became a Vice President of Monumental National Marketing, a subsidiary of Monumental Life in White Plains, New York. Together with a partner, he purchased this division from Monumental and renamed it National Enrollment and Marketing, which became NEMCO Brokerage, Inc. in 1993.

Andrea de Cholnoky is co-head of the Investment Banking, Capital Markets and Alternative Investments Sector for Korn/Ferry International. Based in New York City, she is a member of the firm’s Global Financial Services Market. Prior to joining Korn/Ferry, Ms. de Cholnoky was a senior member of the financial services practice of Spencer Stuart. She began her search career with the firm Nordeman Grimm as head of the Wall Street practice.

Ms. de Cholnoky spent eight years in investment banking, working most recently with Goldman Sachs in both its corporate finance and fixed income divisions. Earlier she worked for Merrill Lynch Capital Markets in investment banking and Chemical Bank in corporate lending. She has been a member of the Museum of American Finance's Board of Trustees since 2011.

David Deutsch is the Founder and President of David N. Deutsch & Company, a New York-based private investment banking firm providing merger, acquisition and financing services to leading closely-held companies. Mr. Deutsch began his Wall Street career at Lehman Brothers in 1981. He is a contributing author of The Mergers & Acquisitions Handbook (McGraw-Hill) and has been described as one of the “leading buyout professionals” by Securities Data Publishing. He has been profiled and his comments have appeared in numerous national business publications including The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Investor’s Business Daily, Crain’s New York Business, Corporate Finance, The Associated Press and on The Discovery Channel. He is a dedicated member of the NYC business community where was Founder of the Wall Street Council of Lincoln Center and is an active alumnus of the Columbia Business School where he serves as an Alumni Admissions Ambassador. He has been a member of the Museum of American Finance’s Board of Trustees since 1999.

Charles M. Elson is the Chairman of the Weinberg Center For Corporate Governance at the Lerner College University of Delaware and is a leading authority on corporate governance issues. Elson's fields of expertise include executive compensation, corporate compliance, securities regulation, corporate legal matters and Delaware issues.

He has written extensively on the subject of boards of directors and is a frequent contributor to various scholarly and popular publications. He is Vice Chairman of the ABA Business Law Section's Committee on Corporate Governance and has been a member of the Museum of American Finance's Board of Trustees since 2011.

Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and the William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Dr. Ferguson has published many bestsellers including: Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), The Pity of War: Explaining World War One (Basic Books) and The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild (Penguin), The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 (Basic), Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (Basic), Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (Penguin, 2004), and The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006).

He is a regular contributor to television and radio, and reviews regularly for the British and American press. He is a contributing editor for the Financial Times. In 2004 Time magazine named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people. He has been a member of the Museum of American Finance’s Board of Trustees since 2006.

Michael Geltzeiler is the Group Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of NYSE Euronext. He joined NYSE Euronext in June 2008 and is also a member of the Management Committee. Mr. Geltzeiler previously had served as President, School & Educational Services for the Reader's Digest Association and was the organization's CFO and Senior Vice President from 2001 to 2007. He also served as CFO, Senior Vice President and Controller at ACNielsen Corporation and in a variety of senior finance positions both in the U.S. and abroad for Dun & Bradstreet. He has been a member of the Museum's Board of Trustees since 2009.

John Herzog is the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Museum of American Finance and currently Chairman Emeritus of Spink/Smythe, an auction house specializing in antique stocks and bonds, banknotes, coins, autographs and photographs.  Formerly he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Herzog Heine Geduld, Inc.  He is a member of the Board of Overseers at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

Myron Kandel was the Founding Financial Editor and economic commentator for CNN for 25 years until his retirement from those posts in 2005. After a previous career in newspapers, he was part of CNN’s original launch team in 1980 and has been recognized as a pioneer in the development of financial news on television. In 2000, TJFR, a media industry publication, named him one of the 10 most influential business journalists of the 20th century. He has been a member of the Museum of American Finance’s Board of Trustees since 2006.

Kirkpatrick MacDonald is the managing partner at MacDonald & Cie, a firm involved in the acquisition, development and management of large real estate holdings. Since 1997 he has also been a developer of The Preserve at Park City, a planned community near Salt Lake City, Utah. From 1985-1990 he was vice chairman at the George Washington National Bank in Arlington, VA. Earlier in his career he also served as an assistant vice president at JP Morgan, the chief financial officer at a consulting firm and an associate in corporate finance at Lehman Brothers. He has been a member of the Museum of American Finance's Board of Trustees since 2011.

Consuelo Mack created "Consuelo Mack WealthTrack," a weekly half-hour program on public television, in 2005, and serves as the show's anchor and managing editor. Prior to founding "WealthTrack," she spent over a decade at The Wall Street Journal as the anchor and managing editor of its weekly syndicated business program, "The Wall Street Journal Report." She has been a member of the Museum of American Finance's Board of Trustees since 2012.

Robert Muccilo was promoted to vice president and controller of Con Edison in July 2009, and was named CFO and controller of Orange and Rockland utilities in November 2009. Mr. Muccilo joined Con Edison in 1978 as an accountant. He has held numerous corporate accounting positions including assistant controller, department manager, senior accountant, and supervisor. Mr. Muccilo served on the Orange and Rockland merger integration team as team leader. As part of a career-development opportunity, Mr. Muccilo assumed the position of general manager, Stores Operations, in August 2006, where he was responsible for operating and managing the central warehouse and distribution facility for electric, gas, and steam materials. He returned to corporate accounting in 2008 as team leader for the Finance Transformation Project, which was responsible for strengthening the company’s financial reporting processes. He has been a member of the Museum of American Finance's Board of Trustees since 2011.

Wilbur Ross is the Chairman and CEO of the New York-based firm WL Ross & Co., LLC., which he founded in 2000. In April 2002, Mr. Ross organized International Steel Group and was its Board Chairman. He currently serves as Chairman of ITG and its affiliate Nano-Tex, and is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of WLR Recovery Fund L.P., WLR Recovery Fund II L.P., WLR Recovery Fund III L.P., Asia Recovery Fund, Asia Recovery Fund Co-Investment, Nippon Investment Partners, and Absolute Recovery Hedge Fund. He has been a member of the Museum of American Finance’s Board of Trustees since 2000.

Richard Schaeffer is the retired Chairman of NYMEX Holdings, Inc. and the New York Mercantile Exchange. He served as a member of the NYMEX Board of Directors from March 1990 to 2008; he was the Treasurer of the Exchange from 1993 to 2004; the Vice Chairman from 2004 to 2006, and Chairman from 2006 to 2008. Mr. Schaeffer has been a NYMEX member and seat owner since 1981. Mr. Schaeffer has been a member of the Museum's Board of Trustees since 2009.

Tim Schantz is EVP and COO of PE Cathedral Foundation. He has over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, both in the US and internationally, including close to a decade of living and working in Europe. Over the past decade, Mr. Schantz has managed businesses and led talented individuals in the merchant banking, alternative asset management, corporate/structured finance and wealth management areas. While at ING, he served as President of ING Capital, ING's US merchant bank, and then as, President of ING Furman Selz Asset Management, its platform for hedge fund, private equity and other alternative investing. Tim subsequently headed up ING’s specialized finance units focused on the US middle market and Latin America, before joining Deutsche Bank as head of the structured finance platform serving both the brokerage and private banking sales channels. He has been a member of the Museum of American Finance's Board of Trustees since 2003.

Mark Shenkman is the Founder and CEO of Shenkman Capital Management, Inc., a New York-based registered investment adviser that specializes exclusively in high yield bonds and bank loans. From one $50 million account in 1985, he has been the driving force in building Shenkman Capital into one of America's 250 largest money management firms. Prior to founding Shenkman Capital, he served as President and CEO at First Investors Asset Management Company and as Vice President and co-head of Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb's High Yield Department. He has been a member of the Museum's Board of Trustees since 2009.

David Shuler is the Managing Director for Alliance & Venture Management at the CME Group. He previously held two very senior leadership roles at NYSE Euronext, first as Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff during both the NYSE IPO and the exchange’s merger with Euronext, and then as Senior Vice President for NYSE Technologies. In his most recent role, he headed NYSE Euronext’s exchange technology business. He previously worked as a VP for Goldman Sachs, both in New York and in Tokyo where he developed the firm’s Asian business strategy. He began his career with 14 years of service as a diplomat in the U.S. Foreign Service. He has been a member of the Museum of American Finance’s Board of Trustees since 2006.

Ewout Steenbergen serves as chief financial officer of ING. In this role, he is responsible for strategic finance, actuarial, risk management, capital planning, income taxes, financial reporting and treasury for ING Insurance US. Prior to taking this role in January 2010, he served as chief financial officer and chief risk officer for ING Asia Pacific. Steenbergen has held a number of management roles for ING including serving as regional general manager in Hong Kong, and as CEO of RVS, an ING Group company based in the Netherlands that provides a broad range of insurance and pension products. He has been a member of the Museum of American Finance's Board of Trustees since 2011.

Richard Sylla is the Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets and Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University. He is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, with a current project on the development of the business corporation in the antebellum United States. Dr. Sylla received his BA, MA and PhD from Harvard University. He is the author of The American Capital Market, 1846-1914; co-author of The Evolution of the American Economy and A History of Interest Rates; and co-editor of Patterns of European Industrialization—The Nineteenth Century, The State, the Financial System, and Economic Modernization; and Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s, as well as numerous articles, essays and reviews on business, economic and financial history. He is a former editor of The Journal of Economic History and a past president of the Economic History Association and the Business History Conference; BHC presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Sylla in 2011.

Dr. Sylla has been a member of the Museum of American Finance’s Board of Trustees since 2004, and the Chairman of the Board since 2010. He is also a guest curator of the several of the Museum's exhibits.

Charles V. Wait is President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of the Adirondack Trust Company in Saratoga Springs, New York. From 2003 to 2009 he served as a Class A member of the Board of Directors of The Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Mr. Wait also serves as Director of the New York Bankers Association and as a member of the Saratoga County Water Authority. He has been a member of the Museum of American Finance's Board of Trustees since 2011.

Ken Winans is a renowned investment manager and President of Winans International Investment Management & Research. He is a frequent guest of television and radio shows nationwide, and is the senior market commentator on Los Angeles’ most popular news radio station, CBS affiliate-KNX. Mr. Winans has had much of his investment research published as headline articles by leading magazines and newspapers, and is the award-winning author of Preferreds: Wall Street’s Best Kept Income Secret and Investment Atlas. He has been a member of the Museum's Board of Trustees since 2009.

 Howard A. Baker has been in the securities industry for more than 40 years. Following a lengthy career at the American Stock Exchange where he held several senior management positions in the options and derivative securities areas, Mr. Baker now heads his own firm, Howard Baker Associates, which provides legal and consulting services to select U.S. and international financial organizations.  Mr. Baker holds a Juris Doctor degree from Brooklyn Law School and a BA from Boston University where he has served as Chair of its National Alumni Council.  He is a past Associate Dean of the Suffolk Academy of Law, the education affiliate of the Suffolk County (NY) Bar Association; a former board member of The Options Clearing Corporation; an Adjunct Professor at New York University's Stern School of Business; and presently serves as a Public Arbitrator for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.  Mr. Baker has served on the Financial History editorial board since 1999.

Brian Grinder is a professor in the Department of Management at Eastern Washington University. He has served on the Financial History editorial board since 2001, and is the co-author of its “Educators’ Perspective” column.

Gregory DL Morris, principal of Enterprise & Industry Historic Research, is a veteran journalist and historian. In more than two decades of writing and editing trade and consumer publications he has reported from 43 states, eight Canadian provinces, and 13 countries on five continents. He was founding Gulf Coast Bureau Chief and Global Markets Editor for ChemicalWeek, Executive Editor of Bank Investment Marketing, Editor-in-Chief of The Green Magazine, and Editor-in-Chief and Associate Publisher of Today's Refinery. Morris has had features in books and national magazines including The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge (first and second editions), American Heritage, Continental (in-flight), Financial Planning, Risk & Insurance, Institutional Investor News, Trains, and American Oil & Gas Reporter. He has served as a guest curator for two of the Museum’s exhibits, and is an editorial board member and frequent contributor to Financial History magazine.

Art Samansky is a founding principal of The Samansky Group, a Long Island, NY-based corporate communications firm. He developed his expertise in public affairs, strategic and crisis communications planning, media and presentation/speech training, message development, and related communications disciplines over a more than 40-year career in New York City journalism, and public affairs posts in the public and private sectors with domestic and global organizations. He has served on the Financial History editorial board since 1990.

Bob Shabazian has been a member of the Museum’s editorial advisory board since 1991. After graduating from Rutgers University in 1950 with a degree in journalism, he worked at the Newark (N.J.) News, his last position there as business and financial editor. In 1973, Shabazian joined the public relations staff at the American Stock Exchange. He retired from the Exchange as Managing Director, Exchange Communications in 1997, thereafter continuing as a consultant for two years. His memberships include the New York Financial Writers’ Association, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and the National Press Club.

Robert E. Wright is the Nef Family Chair of Political Economy at Augustana College (SD), where he teaches courses in business, economic, financial and policy history. He is the author or co-author of 11 books and the editor or co-editor of 21 volumes, including most recently Bailouts: Public Money, Private Profit (Columbia University Press/SSRC, 2009). Wright is one of the Museum's guest curators and has served on the Financial History editorial board since 2008.

Jason Zweig is The Wall Street Journal’s personal finance columnist.  Prior to his work at the Journal, he was a senior writer and columnist at Money magazine.  He is the author of Your Money and Your Brain (Simon & Schuster, 2007) and the editor of the updated edition of Benjamin Graham’s classic, The Intelligent Investor (HarperCollins, 2003).  He has served on the Financial History editorial board since 1990, and is also a past member of the Museum’s Board of Trustees.

Richard Sylla is the Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets and Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University. He is also a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, with a current project on the development of the business corporation in the antebellum United States. Dr. Sylla received his BA, MA and PhD from Harvard University. He is the author of The American Capital Market, 1846-1914; co-author of The Evolution of the American Economy and A History of Interest Rates; and co-editor of Patterns of European Industrialization—The Nineteenth Century, The State, the Financial System, and Economic Modernization; and Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s, as well as numerous articles, essays and reviews on business, economic and financial history. He is a former editor of The Journal of Economic History and a past president of the Economic History Association and the Business History Conference; BHC presented its Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Sylla in 2011.

Dr. Sylla has been a member of the Museum of American Finance’s Board of Trustees since 2004, and the Chairman of the Board since 2010. He is also a guest curator of the several of the Museum's exhibits.

Robert E. Wright is the Nef Family Chair of Political Economy at Augustana College (SD), where he teaches courses in business, economic, financial and policy history. He is the author or co-author of 11 books and the editor or co-editor of 21 volumes, including most recently Bailouts: Public Money, Private Profit (Columbia University Press/SSRC, 2009). Wright is one of the Museum's guest curators and has served on the Financial History editorial board since 2008.