Society President Andra Miller
Andra was elected President of the New York Society for Ethical Culture at the Board meeting of June 11, 2007. She is also on the American Ethical Union Board and serves as Chair of AEU's Board Development Committee.
After joining NYSEC in April 2003, she volunteered for small tasks, and her first "serious action" was a short talk on spirituality for a panel program the last Sunday of 2003. Trained for society volunteer work at the Lay Leadership Summer School of 2004, she has since presented an address on Felix Adler's "Supreme Moral Rule" both at this Society and the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, and a December 31 talk, "Goodbye 2006," on the activist legacy of the New York Society for Ethical Culture.
Andra recently was Chair of the Radio Committee and is still active in hosting some of the Society's monthly programs on WBAI. She also was director of Sunday afternoon programs and served on the Adult Education Committee. She is a certified Ethical Culture Officiant.
Andra reads books onto tape at JBI and interviews political candidates for Citizens Union. She has served on the watershed protection committee of the New York State Sierra Club and has been active for many years in community theater (acting, singing and directing). Her professional background is in business writing, business administration, magazine editing and public relations.
Board Members
Bob Berger has been a member since 1995, serving on the Board of Trustees from 1997 to 2004 and reelected to the Board in 2007. He holds the office of Treasurer and is Chair of the House Committee – and has served in the past on the Fund Raising and Public Relations committees. Bob also participates in Society activities: writing class, Great Books discussions, chorus and other events; and volunteers often at the main Sunday meetings to function as newcomer host or greeter. He has served in the past on the boards of two other non-profit organizations, ARC and IAHD, both dealing with handicapped and challenged children and adults.
In 2001, after forty-seven years of involvement in the commercial air conditioning business, thirty-five of which were as as owner/president of Frankel-Berger Air Conditioning, Bob retired. In 2002 he un-retired and now works three days a week as a residential property manager. Married for close to forty-five years; he has two children and two grandchildren.
Heather Grady was elected to the board in 2007, and has taken on several assignments in her role as trustee — working on an updated mission statement and spearheading the hiring of two new staff members.
Heather is the Director of Policy and Partnerships for Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, founded by Mary Robinson in 2002. She is involved in programs on Trade and Decent Work, Corporate Responsibility and Women's Leadership. Prior to joining Realizing Rights, Heather lived overseas for more than 20 years, working for non-profits, including Oxfam Great Britain. She also managed development and humanitarian programs in East Asia, Africa and the Middle East. She has authored books and articles on international development and human rights.
Heather has a Masters Degree from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts from Smith College. She lives in New York with her two daughters.
Phyllis Harrison-Ross, M.D., has been a trustee of the Society since 2005, and is Chair of the Social Service Board for United Social Services, a subsidiary of the Society. She also serves on the Finance Committee, the Public Issues Committee, the Radio Committee and is chair of the Endowment Committee.
Phyllis is in the practice of child and adult psychiatry, and is president of All Healers Mental Health Alliance, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Sciences at New York Medical College, Emeritus Attending Psychiatrist/Chief of Psychiatry at Metropolitan Hospital Center and Founder and Managing Partner of Black Psychiatrists of Greater New York.
She has written numerous articles and book chapters on community and children’s mental health, prison health – and she authored the books The Black Child and Getting It Together. Her interest in media extends from the NYSEC radio show on WBAI.FM, “Ethics on the Air” to championing the use of Telepsychiatry to reach underserved populations.
Phyllis is a past President of Black Psychiatrists of America and, in 2004, received the American Psychiatric Association’s Solomon Carter Fuller Award for distinguished service to improve the lives of Black people. The All Healers Mental Health Alliance, an organization that Phyllis, along with the Society and the Social Service Board, was instrumental in forming, received an award for Public Health Leadership at the American Public Health Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C. in November, 2007. The honor was bestowed for AHMHA's work to bring hope and healing to disaster survivors following the destruction of the 9/11 World Trade Center tragedy and the devastation caused in the mid-south by the Katrina and Rita hurricanes.
Margaretha Jones has been a member of the Society since 1986. She joined the board in 2007 and is vice-chair of the Social Service Board. She volunteers for the Supervised Visitations Program (court ordered visitations for non-custodial parents to see their children in a safe environment) and the Women’s Homeless Shelter.
As the main NGO representative for the International Humanist and Ethical Union at the United Nations, she supervises a team of people from the Institute for Humanist Studies, a member of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County and the Director for the IHEU Appignani Bioethics Center. They collaborate with the representatives from the American Humanist Association, and a couple of years ago we started Council of Ethics-Based Organizations. Margaetha says that she has had wonderful opportunities to represent Ethical Culture at interfaith programs within the UN NGO community.
Her background includes administration work beginning in 1980 in the American Ethical Union Office. She was their national administrator from 1987-2001.
Margaretha grew up in Switzerland and also lived and worked in France and Belgium. She has a Commercial Degree from Switzerland and a BA from Fordham University with a major in Anthropology. She works part time as a bookkeeper in a small Law Firm.
“As a grandmother, I am deeply concerned about the legacy our generation is leaving,” she says. “I find that Ethical Culture has the potential to bring people together to work for a better world, our core mission.”
Steven L. Schultz is serving his second three-year term as a member of the Board. He joined the Society in 2001 with his wife, Theresa. Shortly thereafter, they participated in a naming ceremony for their son, Brian.
A real-estate litigator for some twenty-five years, Steve is a junior partner in his firm. He is particularly concerned with the threat posed by religious fundamentalism to the separation of church and state as well as the government’s increasing restrictions on civil liberties.
Shortly after the start of the Iraq War, Steve organized a forum entitled “Civil Liberties in a Time of War.” He helped plan various Advocacy Forums during the tenure of Khoren Arisian, the former presiding leader.
Steve graduated Phi Beta Kappa from The John Hopkins University with a B.A. in political science and from George Washington University Law School with a J.D. degree. He resides in Greenwich Village with his wife and son.
Sylvan Wallach has been a member of the board for six years and of NYSEC for 26 years, is active on the By-Laws and Fundraising Committees, and has recently served on several ad hoc committees related to management structure and leadership. He has also been editor and producer of our newsletter, "Ethical Outlook," chair of the Newsletter and Internet Committees and web master. Sylvan re-programmed our web pages to improve maintenance and reduce download times, and worked on making our web site accessible to the handicapped, including the blind. In the past, as member of the Building Committee, he commissioned a study of access for the disabled — and he was instrumental in increasing the number of trustees on the board from 12 to 15 so that the board would be more representative of the Society's membership.
Sylvan has served as delegate to several Assemblies of the American Ethical Union — and before joining the New York Society, he was a member of the Long Island Society. He is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at C.W. Post College and holds a Mathematics Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. He has government and industrial experience as a chemist, patent examiner, member of the War Production Board during WW II, developer of applications of nuclear power, mathematician, computer programmer and web site designer. His outside activities include tennis, chess, and helping his wife Judy in the establishment of a charter school. His happiest moments involve keeping up with numerous children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Honorary Board Members
Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh is an honorary trustee, having been president for six years, from 2001 to 2007. He has also served in the past as Vice President and Secretary of the board, chair of the Ethical Action Committee, Chair of the Building committee, and Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee.
Michael is also currently serving on the AEU Leadership Committee, which is charged with administering training programs for leaders-in-training and lay leaders wishing to be certified to perform ceremonial services such as weddings, memorials and namings.
In private life, Michael has his own architectural practice and projects include 262 affordable homes in the Bronx, a Community Center for St. Jerome's Church in the Bronx, lead free safe house currently under construction in Brooklyn, New York. To move from the practical to the sublime, Michael has presented two Technical Papers on Space Station Design at industry conferences and space station designs he collaborated on with his mentor Michael Kalil are now part of the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection.
Michael's other involvements include past membership on the Board of the Michael Kalil Foundation for Smart Design, established in 2001 in memory of designer Michael Kalil at the Department of Architecture, Parsons School of Design; past membership of the Steering and Executive Committees of the Live/Work Coalition of New York, a group he helped organize, which sought legislation extending coverage to new generations of Loft conversions; and current membership of Community Board 1 in Brooklyn where he serves as Second Vice Chair (chair of the land use committee).
Judith D. Wallach is an honorary trustee of the Society, having served as the first woman president for seven years, from 1994 to 2001. Prior to that, she was chair of the Social Service Board, of which she was a founder of the Shelter for the Homeless and the Supervised Visitation Project. She has also served on the board of the American Ethical Union and chaired its Fund Development Committee. During her 26 years of membership in the Society, Judy has served as chair and member of numerous committees, been a Sunday speaker and served as a wedding and memorial officiant. She has also served on the Ethical Culture Fieldston School's Board of Trustees and its Executive Committee. A graduate of the Humanist Institute and, for 12 years, on its Board of Governors, she chairs the Institute's Education Committee.
Her passion for the past six years has been the effort, with a group of educators and others, to start public charter schools based on the educational philosophy of Felix Adler and incorporating the essential elements of an Ethical Culture Fieldston education. Making a free, public education with ethics as its base and using a child-centered approach and a thematically integrated curriculum has been, and continues to be, her dominating interest. Judy has also been a board member and secretary of the Partnership for the Homeless, and a member of Citizens Committee for Children of New York. For the past 10 years she has chaired Palladia, Inc., a multi-site human services agency that provides residential and outpatient treatment for substance abusers, many of whom have serious mental and physical illness. She's been on its board since 1991.
In her otherwise unoccupied time, she pursues her private practice in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Judy is a psychology affiliate of Lenox Hill Hospital and supervises doctoral candidates in their group work. She and her husband, board member Sylvan Wallach, have a large, blended family spread across the U.S. and in Australia.
Staff
Robert Liebeskind is Executive Director of the Society, responsible for budget development and fiscal management, overseeing the room rental program and management of the building, and working with the board and committees in long-range planning and developing programs for membership and the public. Bob has been with the society since July of 2004.
Prior to joining the Society staff, Bob was Director of Administration for the Department of Psychiatry at North General Hospital. There, he oversaw the day-to-day operations, provided short-and long-term strategic planning and worked closely with the medical staff. He has also served as the Associate Executive Director for the YM & YWHA of Washington Heights and Inwood, providing budget development and fiscal management, long range planning, and the supervision of staff members who ran the agencys myriad programs.
Bob holds a Masters degree in Social Work Administration from Hunter College. He lives with his wife and two children, 12 and 9, in New York City.
