2010 Board of Advisors
Chair
Susan Rubinstein has been a strategic marketing consultant to leading corporations for more than 25 years. Her client roster includes Avon; Bacardi; Brown Forman; Citicorp; Chanel; Christie's; Diageo; Kraft; M&M/Mars and PepsiCo. She began her career as a senior research associate in programming at the National Broadcasting Company, where she was the author of the first network study on the impact of election night broadcasts on voting behavior which was presented to the U.S. Senate. Susan subsequently became a Marketing Supervisor at Rumrill Hoyt Advertising, Inc. and founded a market research business that expanded into strategic marketing. She has also served as a campaign consultant for several city, state and national political campaigns developing message, campaign issues and writing speeches and campaign materials.
In addition to being Chair of the Board of Directors for Common Cause/New York, Susan serves on the President’s Advisory Council for Smith College and is a Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center.
She received an M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a B.A., Magna Cum Laude, from Smith College in Government. She spent her Junior Year abroad at the Instutut des Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva, Switzerland.
Treasurer
David Spaulding is a Principal at the accounting firm Janover LLC where he specializes in tax and consulting for small & family owned businesses as well has high net worth individuals from a tax and estate planning perspective. David founded a business management and tax services practice in 1989, then built and developed it into a successor CPA firm, Flowers & Becker LLP, where he became the Principal in charge of its tax compliance practice.
David holds a B.A. from Binghamton University (NY) and an M.F.A. from Temple University (PA). With over 26 years of experience in taxation David is an Enrolled Agent, licensed to practice before the Internal Revenue Service. He is also a member of the National Association of Tax Professionals.
David serves as the state treasurer of Common Cause/New York. He is also the treasurer and member of the board of directors of the Foundation for Small Voices, a children’s services and education charity and is a founding director of Scripts Up! - a non-profit theatre development company.
Secretary
Eleanor Moretta has been active with Common Cause/New York as either a volunteer or Board member since 1991. She has conducted research for the “Connect the Dots” reports, a signature Common Cause/NY initiative which traces the impact of money in politics, assisted with membership updates and gathered over 1,000 signatures on a petition to Congress for the Free Air Time bill in 2002-03. Recently she worked with staff to lobby Albany to enact a measure requiring incarcerated people to be counted as residents of their home districts, which was passed in 2010. She has spoken to community groups in Manhattan and Brooklyn about Common Cause/New York and its issues.
Before retiring in 2006, she worked for 18 years as Director of Exhibitions at Pratt Institute organizing exhibitions of contemporary art, design and architecture at the Institute’s Manhattan and Brooklyn galleries.
She received a B. A. from the College of New Rochelle, a Master of Arts in Teaching from Brown University, and an M. F. A. from Syracuse University.
Members
Thomas Bergdall recently returned to New York from Africa, where he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer helping to design and implement programs to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in Botswana. Before this two year program, Mr. Bergdall served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel of HealthFirst, Inc., a hospital-owned health care company operating throughout New York City and northern New Jersey. A long-time government employee and administrator, Thomas has also served as First Deputy Commissioner, and as General Counsel, of New York City Human Resources Administration, and as a senior attorney in a number of roles within the New York City Law Department.
Mr. Bergdall received a B.A. Cum Laude in Political Science from New York University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.
Sean Coffey recently sought the Democratic nomination for New York State Attorney General following lengthy careers as a lawyer and naval officer. Sean was until late 2009 co-managing partner of Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP, where he represented institutional investors in several of the largest civil litigations in history, was dubbed “Wall Street’s New Nemesis” by Bloomberg Markets, and was named one of National Law Journal’s “Top Ten Litigators in the U.S.” in 2005. Sean ‘s stints in public service include several years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, eight years of active duty as a naval officer (where among other assignments he served as personal military assistant to Vice President George H.W. Bush while attending law school at night) , and eighteen years of reserve service (during which he commanded a patrol squadron and the Reserve component of Enterprise Carrier Battle Group). Sean retired as a Navy Captain in 2004. Sean earned a B.S. in Ocean Engineering with merit from the
Evan A. Davis is a partner of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, based in the New York office. His practice focuses on litigation and other forms of international and domestic dispute resolution. Evan is a recognized authority on New York law and has argued frequently in the New York Court of Appeals, the State’s highest court. He served as President of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from May 2000 through May 2002, and as Vice Chair of the Trustees of Columbia University, where he also chaired the Finance Committee. Evan began work at the Firm in 1975 and became a partner in 1978. In September 1985, he left the Firm to serve as Counsel to New York State Governor Mario M. Cuomo, rejoining the Firm in February, 1991.
Evan clerked for Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court of the United States and Judge Harold Leventhal of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
He received a J.D. degree, magna cum laude, from Columbia Law School, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Law Review, and an undergraduate degree, cum laude, from Harvard College. He is a member of the Bar of New York.
Evan is a member of the American Law Institute, and the board of Governors of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, New York. He is a Director of the Center for Family Representation and Common Cause/New York. He formerly chaired the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Public Education and its Commission on Youth Education for Citizenship.
Eric N. Gioia was elected to the New York City Council for three consecutive terms and served from 2001-2009. He represented the Queens neighborhoods of Woodside, Sunnyside, Maspeth and Long Island City. In 2009 he ran for New York City Public Advocate in the Democratic primary. He is currently a vice president and private banker for JP Morgan’s Private Wealth Management Division in New York City.
He formerly practiced law at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy in New York, worked as a law clerk in the Clinton White House and was a staff member of Vice President Al Gore’s presidential campaign.
Eric was educated at New York University and Georgetown University Law Center.
William N. Hubbard III is Chairman and President of Center Development Corporation, a multifamily and mixed use real estate development company active in the northeast. Mr. Hubbard served in the Volunteers in Service to America program (VISTA) and is a former associate of the Wall Street law firm of Thatcher, Proffitt and Wood. He was a co-founder of the Environmental Action Coalition, former Trustee and Officer of the City Club in New York, and Chairman of its Housing Committee. In addition, Mr. Hubbard was appointed to Community Board Five in mid-town Manhattan during the Koch administration, and served on the Executive Committee of the Association for a Better New York. He currently serves on the National Governing Board of Common Cause, and is a Trustee of the Citizens Budget Committee and the Citizens Housing and Planning Council. He is also a Board member of Trees NY, the State Council on Waterways, and is Chairman of the New York Foundation for Senior Citizens.
A graduate of Williams College and the London School of Economics, Mr. Hubbard holds a law degree from the University of Virginia and was admitted to practice in the State of New York.
Marianne Engelman Lado is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Seton Hall University’s School of Law. She served for the past ten years as General Counsel to New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), a non-profit civil rights law firm that practices community lawyering.
Marianne has also played a role in the development of the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights, a nationwide effort to address the rollback of civil rights by the courts. She was previously a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), where she worked on litigation and advocacy within LDF’s Poverty & Justice Program, representing clients attempting to break barriers of access to health care and quality education. She organized the legal effort in the late 1990s to save the public hospitals in New York City and has lectured widely and has taught graduate and undergraduate level courses in public administration, health policy, and education law at Baruch College.
She holds a B.A. in government from Cornell University, a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.A. in Politics from Princeton University. Her publications include “Unfinished Agenda: The Need for Civil Rights Litigation to Address Continuing Patterns of Race Discrimination and Inequalities in Access to Health Care,” “Breaking the Barriers of Access to Health Care: A Discussion of the Role of Civil Rights Litigation and the Relationship Between Burdens of Proof and the Experience of Denial,” “Evaluating Systems for Delivering Legal Services to the Poor: Conceptual and Methodological Considerations” (co-authored with Gregg G. Van Ryzin), and “A Question of Justice: African- American Legal Perspectives on the 1883 Civil Rights Cases,” among others.
Benjamin Shuldiner is a young leader in the field of education. He is the founder and principal of the High School for Public Service in Brooklyn, a public school specifically designed to deliver high quality education in a socio-economically depressed community. He began the school in 2003 with a $500,000 grant from the Gates Foundation which he was awarded based on the innovative educational model he designed. The school attained a graduation rate of 97.6% in 2007, the highest of any school in Brooklyn.
He is also an Adjunct Lecturer on educational theory and administration at both Baruch and Brooklyn Colleges.
At age 28, Ben received the Jefferson Award for innovation, leadership and outstanding contribution to education reform and was named the "Greatest Public Servant" in America under 35. The Jefferson Awards were created by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and were designated to be the "Nobel Prize" for public and community service by order of the United States Congress.
Ben ran for United States Congress in the 19th congressional district of New York and was deemed a "good candidate" with an "energetic campaign" by the New York Times, but he lost the primary to John Hall in 2006.
He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, with a degree in history and science and was awarded the prestigious Stowe-Harvard Fellowship for extraordinary promise as a young educator. He received his Master's Degree from Baruch College and first began teaching at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn.