APRIL 22, 2020

7:00PM PERFORMANCE
NEW YORK CITY CENTER
131 WEST 55th STREET

DINNER AND DANCING TO FOLLOW
THE METROPOLITAN CLUB
1 EAST 60th STREET

PROCEEDS BENEFIT THE CREATION OF NEW WORKS
AND PRESERVATION OF GRAHAM MASTERPIECES

FESTIVE ATTIRE

HOST
ALINA CHO, CBS SUNDAY MORNING

SPECIAL GUEST
DIANA VISHNEVA in DEEP SONG

WORLD PREMIERE BY
ANDREA MILLER

HONORING TRAILBLAZING WOMEN
TRACY RICHELLE HIGH
LAURIE BIELSKI MAHON
JACKIE-MICHELLE MARTINEZ
LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN
JANE EDISON STEVENSON
CAROL WINCENC

Alina Cho, Gala Host

Alina Cho is a veteran journalist with more than twenty years of experience in covering a range of topics from presidential politics to world affairs to investigative reporting to fashion. She is currently a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning, the top-rated Sunday morning program in the United States. She also hosts a lecture series at The Metropolitan Museum of Art called The Atelier with Alina Cho. Past guests include Anna Wintour, Donatella Versace, Michael Kors, Diane von Furstenberg and Vera Wang.

In addition, Ms. Cho serves as Editor at Large at Ballantine Bantam Dell, where she is responsible for acquiring and editing fashion and lifestyle books, including the memoirs of Tommy Hilfiger and Donna Karan.

Previously, for nearly a decade, she was a National Correspondent for CNN. During her tenure at the network, she traveled twice to communist North Korea, covered the historic first election of President Barack Obama and was part of the Peabody and Emmy award-winning team that covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She has interviewed everyone from President Clinton to Nicole Kidman to Madonna. She also hosted the network specials, Fashion: Backstage Pass and Big Stars, Big Giving.  

Prior to her work at CNN, Ms. Cho held various posts at ABC and CNBC. She earned an M.S. from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a B.A. from Boston College. She also holds an honorary doctorate from Old Dominion University for her contributions to journalism.

Tracy Richelle High, Honoree

Tracy High is a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and a member of both the Firm’s Labor and Employment Law Group and Criminal Defense and Investigations Group. Ms. High’s practice focuses on representing financial institutions and other corporations in complex civil litigation, arbitration and mediation proceedings, corporate internal investigations, and labor and employment matters.

She has also represented clients before a wide variety of regulatory and prosecutorial agencies, both at the state and federal levels, as well as Congressional committees and independent examiners appointed by court order. Internally, Ms. High serves as co-chair of the Diversity and Women’s Initiative Committees and one of S&C’s hiring partners. Ms. High also oversees S&C’s active networks for minority associates: the Asian Associates Network, the Network of Black & Latino Lawyers and the LGBT Network. Each of these groups is dedicated to enhancing the experience of S&C’s diverse attorneys and championing their retention and advancement by fostering professional development, networking and mentoring opportunities.

Externally, Ms. High is the Co-Chairwoman of the board of directors of the YWCA-NYC, a Vice Chairwoman of the Legal Aid Society and a board member of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She also serves on the Steering Committee of the Kate Stoneman Project, is a Trustee of the Harvard Law School Association, New York City, and is a member of the Association of Black Women Attorneys and Metropolitan Black Bar Association. Ms. High is also a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

Laurie BIELSKI Mahon, Honoree

Laurie Mahon serves as Vice-Chair of CIBC’s U.S. Investment Banking business, a role she recently assumed after having led the Global Infrastructure and Power team since August 2013. She has spent her entire professional life in the infrastructure space, having had a multifaceted career as a banker, public sector manager, infrastructure executive, consultant, journalist and developer focusing on the development and financing of large infrastructure projects around the globe.

Before joining CIBC Capital Markets, Ms. Mahon was a senior expert in McKinsey’s infrastructure practice. Previously, she spent 12 years as an independent advisor, helping numerous public and private entities develop transportation projects in the U.S., Latin America, China and the U.K.. From 1984 until 1999, she worked on Wall Street as an investment banker, focusing on the infrastructure markets in both the U.S. and emerging markets. She started her banking career as a municipal banker.

Before entering the field of banking, Ms. Mahon spent five years working at New Jersey Transit, where she held various positions in planning and policy until becoming deputy Chief Financial Officer. While there, she executed several innovative public / private financing structures.

Ms. Mahon began her professional career as a journalist with The Boston Globe and The Bergen Record.

Ms. Mahon holds a master’s degree in Urban Planning from Harvard University, and a B.S. summa cum laude from Boston University.

Jackie-Michelle Martinez, Honoree

Jackie-Michelle Martinez joined the FDNY in 2006 and at the time she was just one of 29 women in an organization of 8,000 Firefighters. Ms. Martinez then became the first women’s outreach coordinator, and since the number of female firefighters has doubled. In Ms. Martinez’s outreach she works to make sure that young women everywhere know that they can also become firefighters. She is known city wide for speaking at schools, women’s institutions, and community groups.

Ms. Martinez is one of the four women firefighters assigned to a special operations command unit squad 270. She is currently the United Women Firefighters Association President and was New Yorker of the year in 2017 for her efforts for awareness, exposure for young women to view firefighting as a career path and to increase the amount of women in the field.

Ms. Martinez was honored by the FDNY as part of their annual Women’s History Month awards ceremony. Honorees were nominated by their peers and chosen based on their performance, innovation and dedication to the work of the FDNY.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Honoree

Letty Cottin Pogrebin is an author, activist, and national lecturer.

A founding editor and writer for Ms. Magazine, Pogrebin is also the author of eleven books, including the pre-feminist classic, How to Make it in a Man’s World.

She is also the consulting editor on Free to Be, You and Me, Marlo Thomas’ ground-breaking children’s book, record and television special.

Besides her nearly twenty year affiliation with Ms. magazine, Pogrebin has published articles and opeds in The New York TimesWashington PostTime magazineHuffington PostBoston GlobePhiladelphia InquirerL.A. TimesToronto StarThe NationHarpers BazaarTravel & LeisureFamily Circle, and Good Housekeeping, among other publications. She is a regular columnist for Moment magazine, and for ten years, wrote “The Working Woman” column in The Ladies Home Journal.

Pogrebin currently serves on the boards of Americans for Peace Now, the Free to Be Foundation, the Harvard Divinity School Women Studies in Religion Program, and the Brandeis University Women’s and Gender Studies Program.

Her honors include a Yale University Poynter Fellowship in Journalism; an Emmy Award for Free to Be You and Me; inclusion in Who’s Who in America; and dozens of awards and commendations from a variety of NGOs, civic organizations and religious and educational institutions. In May 2018, she was inducted into the Manhattan Jewish Hall of Fame.

Letty is a graduate of Brandeis University and was a member of its Modern Dance Corps when Martha gave a Master Class there in 1956. (Letty is far left in photo.)

Martha Graham with Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Jane Edison Stevenson, Honoree

Jane Edison Stevenson, in her role as Vice Chair of Korn Ferry, works across the global governance continuum on behalf of clients and has served as a pioneer developing the firm’s Succession capabilities at the Board and CEO level. As the firm’s Global Leader for CEO Succession, Jane regularly serves Fortune 500 clients and high-growth companies at the intersection of business, strategy and top leadership capabilities. She has been acknowledged by BusinessWeek as one of the “100 Most Influential Search Consultants in the World” and has been honored in the NACD’s Directorship 100 multiple times for her influence in the boardroom.

Jane recently led an innovative research initiative with the Rockefeller Foundation’s “100×25” program, geared to advancing 100 women to Fortune 500 CEO roles by 2025. The work included in-depth behavioral interviews and leadership assessments with 57 current and recent Fortune 1000 women CEOs creating the first-ever “roadmap” for companies to create future generations of women CEOs.

A thought leader on governance and innovation, Jane appears regularly in global business media, including BusinessWeek, Fortune, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Innovation Excellence and Strategy+Business. Jane is also a featured speaker at private forums for Fortune 500 clients and other select venues.

Jane is the co-author of Breaking Away: How Great Leaders Create Innovation that Drives Sustainable Growth—And Why Others Fail (McGraw Hill 2011), and is a recipient of the Maurice Holland Award for her writing on innovation.

She serves on the Board of Trustees for The Committee on Economic Development (CED) and is Co-Chair of CED’s Women in Corporate Leadership Sub-committee. She also serves on The Conference Board’s US Human Capital Advisory Board.

Carol Wincenc, Honoree

Carol Wincenc, hailed “Queen of the flute” by New York Magazine, was first prize winner of the 1978 (sole) Naumburg Solo Flute Competition, as well as the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from both the USA and CHINA National Flute Associations, the National Society of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Music, and Distinguished Alumni Award from Manhattan School of Music. In the 2019-20 season she celebrates at The Morgan Library and Museum, Merkin Concert Hall and the Staller Center for the Arts, her 50th Golden Anniversary Legacy Series with five newly commissioned works by Jake Heggie, Pierre Jalbert, Robert Sirota, Larry Alan Smith and Sato Matsui. This grand celebration includes the release of the all-Yuko Uebayashi album on Azica Records with the Escher String Quartet. Recently as part of the Naumburg Looks Back Series she performed at Carnegie’s Weill Hall with her collaborator/pianist Bryan Wagorn of the Metropolitan Opera.

She has appeared as soloist with such ensembles as the Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and London symphonies, the BBC, Warsaw, and Buffalo Philharmonics, as well as the Los Angeles, Stuttgart, and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestras. She has performed in countless festivals such as Mostly Mozart, Aldeburgh, Budapest, Frankfurt, Santa Fe, Spoleto, Music at Menlo, Aspen, Yale/Norfolk, Sarasota, Banff, and Marlboro. A Grammy nominee, she has received a Diapason d’Or Award for her recording of the Rouse Flute Concerto with the Houston Symphony, a Recording of Special Merit Award with pianist András Schiff, and Gramophone magazine’s “Pick of the Month” with the Buffalo Philharmonic. She is a member of the New York Woodwind Quintet and a founding member of Les Amies with New York Philharmonic Principals, harpist Nancy Allen and violist Cynthia Phelps. For over a half century combined, Ms. Wincenc continues to teach on the faculties of The Juilliard School and Stony Brook University. She is renowned for her popular series with Lauren Keiser Music Publishers, the Carol Wincenc 21st Century Flute. Carol spent years training as a ballet dancer.

GALA COMMITTEE

GALA COMMITTEE CHAIR
BARBARA COHEN

CHOREOGRAPHER HOST
KENNETH BLOOM & ABBY MEISELMAN
BARBARA & RODGIN COHEN
HERBERT & JUDITH G. SCHLOSSER
INGER K. WITTER

DANCER HOST
PHILIP & AMY BLUMENTHAL
KORN FERRY
LAURIE MAHON
MARIUS MELAND & ENG KIAN OOI
LORRAINE & JOHN OLER
NICHOLE PERKINS
BERT & LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN
KATHY WHITE

SPONSORS
INGA & FRANK GOLAY
JAYNE MILLARD
JAVIER MORGADO
LEE TRAUB

PATRON
LARUE & ARCHIBALD ALLEN
MICHAEL BECKER & TEE SCATUORCHIO
MERRIE S. FRANKEL
SANDRA HARRIS
PEGGY LYMAN HAYES
DONALD J. ROSE, MD & VICTORIA LADSON ROSE

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

KENNETH BLOOM
CHAIRMAN

JUDITH G. SCHLOSSER
CHAIR EMERITA

INGER K. WITTER
PRESIDENT

LORRAINE OLER
SECRETARY

LARUE ALLEN
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

JANET EILBER
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

AMY BLUMENTHAL
BARBARA COHEN
MERRIE S. FRANKEL
INGA M. GOLAY
SANDRA HARRIS
EMIL KANG
CON WAY LING
JAYNE MILLARD
JAVIER MORGADO
NICHOLE PERKINS
KATHRYN WHITE

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Contact the Chelsea Polanco at the Gala office at 212.229.9200 x 14 or cpolanco@marthagraham.org