Officer | President

Paul Eddy

International Group General Counsel, Travelers

Paul joined the Travelers in 1980.  Since 2009, he has been Group General Counsel for International.  From 2004 to 2009, he was Chief Operating Officer for Travelers Special Services which manages the legacy St. Paul and Travelers run-off operations.  Before that, his responsibilities included corporate and human resources legal matters as a senior member of the Law Department.  He was a member of the Board of Directors of Riverfront Recapture, Inc. in Hartford, Connecticut and the Board of Governors of the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Connecticut.  He also has been an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Connecticut School of Law.  Paul received a B.A. from Ohio Wesleyan University and a J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law where he was Managing Editor of the Connecticut Law Review.  He is a member of the Connecticut Bar Association and the American Bar Association.  He and his wife, Elizabeth Normen, live in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Officer | Vice President

John De Laney

Senior Vice President, Business Affairs Director of International Publishing, ICM Partners

Officer | Treasurer

Andrew Lattimer

Partner, Blum Shapiro

Officer | Secretary

Jeanmarie Shea

Partner, Cohn Birnbaum & Shea P.C.

Jeanmarie Shea practices in the areas of estate and tax planning, probate, trust administration, and charitable giving. She counsels individuals and families with respect to a variety of wealth preservation issues and techniques and works with them to develop and implement estate plans designed to meet their personal goals and objectives while minimizing applicable taxes.

Director

David Baldacci

David Baldacci, author, published his first novel, Absolute Power, in 1996. A major motion picture adaptation followed, with Clint Eastwood as its director and star. In total, David has published 31 novels for adults; all have been national and international bestsellers, and several have been adapted for film and television. His novels have been translated into more than 45 languages and sold in more than 80 countries; over 110 million copies are in print worldwide. David has also published five novels for younger readers, including the #1 bestseller The Finisher, which is in development for feature film, and its #1 bestselling sequel, The Keeper. A lifelong Virginian, David received his Bachelor’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, after which he practiced law in Washington, D.C. While David is involved with several philanthropic organizations, his greatest efforts are dedicated to his family’s Wish You Well Foundation®. Established by David and his wife, Michelle, the Wish You Well Foundation supports family and adult literacy in the United States by fostering and promoting the development and expansion of literacy and educational programs. In 2008 the Foundation partnered with Feeding America to launch Feeding Body & Mind, a program to address the connection between literacy, poverty and hunger. Through Feeding Body & Mind, more than 1 million new and gently used books have been collected and distributed through food banks to families in need. David and his family live in Virginia.

Director

Gina Barreca

Gina Barreca, author of ten books and editor of 11 others, is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Connecticut and the winner of UConn’s highest award for excellence in teaching. Hailed as “smart and funny” by People magazine and “Very, very funny. For a woman,” by Dave Barry, Gina was deemed a “feminist humor maven” by Ms. Magazine. Novelist Wally Lamb said “Barreca’s prose, in equal measures, is hilarious and humane.” Her weekly columns from The Hartford Courant are now distributed internationally by the Tribune Co., and her work has appeared in most major publications, including The New York Times, The Independent of London, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Cosmopolitan, and The Harvard Business Review. Gina is a member of the Friars Club and an honoree of the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. She is the author most recently of If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse?, which was an ELLE Reader’s Prize selection, and her earlier books include It’s Not That I’m Bitter, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World, the bestselling They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women’s Strategic Use of Humor, and Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League.  

Director

Annette Bolt

Retired; former President of the Friends of The Mark Twain House

Director

Michael Chesman

Senior vice president, associate general counsel, and director of tax law at The Hartford. Before joining The Hartford, Chesman was director of the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Internal Revenue Service.

Director

Kerry Driscoll, Ph.D.

Associate Editor, The Mark Twain Papers and Project, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Professor Emerita of English, University of St. Joseph, and author of Mark Twain Among The Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples.

Director

Bob Englehart

Cartoonist, Writer, ECSU Adjunct Professor/em>
Bob Englehart was the editorial cartoonist for The Hartford Courant from 1980 to 2015. He previously worked at the Journal Herald in Dayton, Ohio. His is the author of “Trackrat: Memoir of a Fan.” His current cartoons are posted on Patreon.

Director

Maureen Fitzgerald

Senior Manager, Social Media,  UTC Communications

Director

Rohan Freeman

Rohan Freeman, PE, LS is Founder and President of Freeman Companies, LLC, an award-winning, multi-disciplinary site development, engineering design, and construction services enterprise. Mr. Freeman, an accomplished mountaineer, founded the company in 2009 shortly after summiting Mount Everest with a promise to clients to “Elevate Your Expectations”. This promise and Mr. Freeman’s career-long dedication to economic development and urban design have led to the firm’s involvement in several large-scale, transformative public projects. Rohan Freeman, who grew up in Jamaica, is the first African-American to climb the Seven Summits. He has set up a scholarship at UConn to help elevate others to overcome their own personal challenges: Freeman Companies’s BRIDGE Endowed Engineering Scholarship helps minority students with an interest in civil engineering who have overcome obstacles such as socioeconomic or educational disadvantage. His passions for adventuring and social advocacy recently collided, as he sponsored a fundraising campaign for three Hartford area youth support organizations in conjunction with his 2016 trek to the North Pole. Mr. Freeman is a popular motivational speaker, and member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, U.S. Green Building Council, Construction Institute, Greater New England Minority Supplier Diversity Council and board member of several regional children’s charities. Rohan has been recognized by several local organizations for his contributions to the community. In 2015 Mr. Freeman was inducted to UConn’s Academy of Distinguished Engineers.

Director

Amy Gallent

Former Interim Executive Director, The Mark Twain House & Museum

Director

John N. Giamalis

John N. Giamalis Consulting

Director

Javon Jackson

Javon Jackson is a Professor of Jazz Saxophone and Director of the Jack McLean Jazz Studies Division at the Hartt School of Music.

He plays tenor saxophone and first came to prominence touring with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. He has released 20 recordings as a band leader and has played on 150 CDs.

Director

Maribel La Luz

Senior adviser at Connecticut’s Department of Economic and Community Development.

Maribel La Luz previously worked as Communications Director for Gov. Ned Lamont, Director of Communications for the Connecticut Board of Regents, and Director of Communications and New Media for the City of Hartford.

Director

Karen Licht

Former President of The Friends of The Mark Twain House

Director

Mark Marbury

Dr. Mark Marbury is the first Chief Technology Office of Stanley Black and Decker. He provides strategic technology and commercialization guidance to CEO James Loree, the Exponential learning Unit in Silicon Valley, Industrty 4.0 Manufactory in Hartford, and to the Corporate Ventures Board.

Dr. Maybury received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from College of the Holy Cross (Fenwick Scholar, valedictorian), a master’s degree in computer speech and language processing from Cambridge University, England (Rotary Scholar), a master’s degree in business administration from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a doctoral degree in artificial intelligence from Cambridge.

Director

R. Paul Mehlman

Partner, Landmark Partners

Director

Roger Michel

Roger Michel, Executive Director of the Institute for Digital Archaeology – The IDA is a joint venture of Harvard and Oxford Universities. The IDA’s central mission is to record, preserve and, where necessary, reconstruct cultural heritage sites throughout the world. In partnership with UNESCO and ICOMOS, the IDA has concentrated its efforts on the conflict zones of the Middle East, especially Syria, Iraq and Libya. The IDA was recently selected to lead the reconstruction efforts in Palmyra, Syria. The IDA’s 2016 reconstruction of the Triumphal Arch from Palmyra on Trafalgar Square brought worldwide attention to the issue of contemporary iconoclasm. Mr. Michel has also worked for the past twenty-five years as a government lawyer specializing in criminal law, particularly high-profile murder prosecutions. He has been on the faculty at Boston University for 22 years.

Director

Hans Miller

Corporate Director and Strategic Advisor

Director

John Moran

John Moran, Vice President of External Communications, Assurant Inc., a global risk management firm headquartered in New York City. He previously worked as a Senior Communications Director at United Technologies Corp., as a newspaper journalist, and as an adjunct professor in Communications at Quinnipiac University.

Director

Daniel A. Morris

The Honorable Daniel A. Morris now serves as an appellate judge for the Board of Immigration Appeals in Washington, DC.   He was appointed United States Immigration Judge in 2009 and has presided over immigration court in Hartford, Connecticut.

From 2009 to 2015 he was a judge in Omaha, Nebraska.  He formerly was an Assistant Chief Counsel for the United States Department of Homeland Security. Before that he served for 15 years as an Assistant United States Attorney, responsible for civil cases and criminal prosecutions. He was at different times a partner with the law firm now known as Husch Blackwell, LLP and Senior Corporate Counsel for the Mutual of Omaha Insurance Companies.

 

 

Director

Jeffrey Oller

Executive Director, Ernst & Young

Director

Bridget Quinn-Carey

Bridget Quinn-Carey is the Chief Executive officer of Hartford Public Library. She served as the Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer, and Interim president/CEO of the Queens Library in New York. She also served as Director of the Essex Library Association in Connecticut. She has a BA from the State University of New York at Binghamton, and a Master in Library Science and a Master of Business Administration at St. John’s University.

Director

Zulma Toro, Ph.D.

President, Central Connecticut State University

Director

Edward B. Whittemore

Partner, Murtha Cullina LLP

Ambassadors

Alyce Alfano, Partner, Shipman & Goodwin LLC
Justin Bernier, Morgan Stanley
Donna Collins, Associate Publisher, Hartford Business Journal
Jennifer Dibella, Partner, Cranmore, FitzGerald & Meany
Brian Flaherty, Senior Vice President, Public Policy, Connecticut Business & Industry Association
Raymond Hernandez, Director, Public Relations & Government Affairs, Otis Elevator Co.
Evan Johnson, Corporate Citizenship, ESPN
Julie Daly Meehan, Chief Operating Officer, MetroHartford Alliance
Matt Necci, Partner, Halloran & Sage, LLP
Chip Olson, Regional Wealth Management Advisor, Peoples United Bank
Heather Rhoades, Partner, Cummings & Lockwood
Asker Saeed, President, Saeed Consulting, LLC
Meg Sakellarides, Chief Financial Officer, Connecticut Public Broadcasting Network
Kara Sundlun, Reporter, WFSB
Jeff White, Partner, Robinson & Cole

Trustees Emeriti

Carole Bailey
Coleman Casey
David W. Clark, Jr.
Jared Edwards
Eunice Groark
Nancy Grover
Barbara Kennelly
Philip R. Roberts
Welles A. Standish