2022 Season Gala - Martha Graham Dance Company

APRIL 7, 2022

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

In accordance with New York City Center policies,
all guests must be vaccinated (including booster)
and masks are required.

HOSTED BY
ALINA CHO
CBS SUNDAY MORNING CONTRIBUTOR

FEATURING THE WORLD PREMIERE
OF CAVE BY HOFESH SHECHTER
WITH SPECIAL GUEST DANIIL SIMKIN

HONORING TRAILBLAZING WOMEN
TRACY RICHELLE HIGH
DR. KATHRIN JANSEN
JACKIE-MICHELLE MARTINEZ
JANE EDISON STEVENSON
CAROL WINCENC

Alina Cho, Gala Host

Alina Cho is an Emmy Award-winning contributor to CBS Sunday Morning, producer of the upcoming Netflix documentary on Martha Stewart and host of The Atelier with Alina Cho, an interview series with fashion designers at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Recently, she launched Cho & Tell, a twice-weekly newsletter in partnership with Meta.

Previously, for nearly a decade, Ms. Cho was a National Correspondent for CNN. While at the network, she traveled twice to communist North Korea, covered presidential politics and 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 Richelle High is a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell’s Litigation Group, a co-Head of the Firm’s Labor and Employment Law Group and a member of the Criminal Defense and Investigations practice. 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 Committee and is 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 & Latinx Lawyers and the LGBTQ+ 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 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, a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Labor and Employment Law at the New York University School of Law and a member of the Council of Legal Advisors to Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

KATHRIN U. JANSEN, Ph.D., Honoree

Kathrin U. Jansen, Ph.D., is the Senior Vice President and Head of Vaccine Research and Development (VRD) at Pfizer Inc., and a member of Pfizer’s Worldwide Research, Development and Medical leadership team. With over 28 years of pharmaceutical experience in Vaccine R&D, Dr. Jansen leads a fully integrated, global vaccines research and development organization, with responsibilities ranging from discovery to registration and post-marketing commitments. She manages a clinical vaccines portfolio that includes vaccines to prevent or treat diseases of significant unmet medical need such as those caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), Streptococcus pneumoniae, Clostridioides difficile, Respiratory syncytial virus, Group B streptococcus, and Lyme disease. In collaboration with BioNTech, Dr. Jansen led the development of the BNT162b2 vaccine candidate against coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). Additional accomplishments include the global licensures of Prev(e)nar13® to prevent pneumococcal diseases and the development and licensure of Trumenba®, the first vaccine licensed in the United States to prevent invasive disease caused by Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B.

Dr. Jansen received her doctoral degree in microbiology, biochemistry & genetics from Phillips Universitaet, Marburg, Germany, in 1984. Following completion of her formal training, she continued her postdoctoral training at Cornell University working on the structure and function of the acetylcholine receptor. She then joined the Glaxo Institute for Molecular Biology in Geneva, Switzerland, where she focused on basic studies of a receptor believed to be a drug target to treat allergies.

Dr. Jansen was appointed an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania – School of Medicine in 2010 and has authored and co-authored over 190 publications. She is a member of the CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations) scientific advisory committee, American Society for Microbiology and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.

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 then 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.

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 in developing the firm’s succession capabilities at the Board and CEO level. She additionally serves as executive sponsor for the firm’s Power of ALL initiative, focused on developing diverse talent in the world’s top leadership pipelines.

As the firm’s Global Leader for CEO Succession, she leads a team of 150+ global partners across strategic alignment, search, assessment and development areas of expertise. Having personally led CEO succession for companies like Nike, Johnson & Johnson, Newmont, Target and others, Jane is known as a trusted advisor to many of the world’s top boards and CEOs.

Jane led the firm’s Women CEOs Speak research, funded by The Rockefeller Foundation’s “100×25” program to advance 100 women to Fortune 500 CEO roles by 2025. The work is the largest study of women CEOs to date, and included in-depth behavioral interviews and leadership assessments with 57 Fortune 1000 women CEOs. About to release a 2.0 version of the study, the research identifies the personal and professional factors enabling success, creating the first-ever “developmental roadmap” for companies to create future generations of women CEOs, and strongly correlates to the firm’s research on all under-represented CEOs.

A thought leader on governance and innovation, Jane appears regularly in global business media, including BusinessWeek, Fortune, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, etc. Jane is also a featured speaker at private forums for Fortune 500 clients and other select venues. She has been acknowledged by BusinessWeek as one of the “100 Most Influential Consultants in the World” and been awarded NACD’s ‘Directorship 100’ designation for her influence in the boardroom for each of the past 5 years.

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.

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. During the 2019-22 seasons she is celebrating a half century as an international, concertizing artist at The Morgan Library and Museum, Merkin Concert Hall and the Staller Center for the Arts. For her 50th Golden Anniversary Legacy Series she commissioned five new works by Jake Heggie, Pierre Jalbert, Robert Sirota, Larry Alan Smith and Sato Matsui. This grand celebration included 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.

SEASON SPONSORS

GALA COMMITTEE

GALA COMMITTEE CHAIR
Barbara Cohen

CHOREOGRAPHER HOST
Barbara and Rodgin Cohen
Judith G. Schlosser
Inger K. Witter

DANCER HOST
Tee Scatuorchio and Michael Becker
Philip and Amy Blumenthal
Matthew and Jenna Dapolito
First Republic Bank
Christine Jowers and Rob Friedman
Eng Kian Ooi and Marius Meland
Korn Ferry
Lorraine S. Oler and John S. B. Oler
Pfizer
Jane Edison Stevenson
Ellis Wood and Peter Nakada