New York, N.Y. When my mother passed away in 2001, I was inspired to create Orphans International Worldwide (OIWW) that went on to help vulnerable children in Africa, Asia and the Americas. My father’s death in 2007 provided the impetus to create a foundation embracing arts, education and orphan care with an emphasis on supporting young global […]
Tag Archives: columbia university
Tadeusz Sudol: Connected to Two Worlds – New York and Old Europe
New York, N.Y. Every day, when Tadeusz (Tad) Sudol, Ph.D. makes the crossing from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island — the “small town” of 14,000 in New York’s East River — he is reminded of another crossing he made, 28 years ago. In 1988, Peter Marcuse, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University, met him […]
Ugandan-Indian Filmmaker Mira Nair – Brilliant Thought Leader
New York, N.Y. I braved freezing weather recently to hear Mira Nair speak at the President’s Forum at the Upper East Side’s Asia Society (video). It crossed my mind that I could write a story on her work. I failed to grasp her work – as both a humanitarian and a filmmaker – was so vast it […]
Fountain House Symposium Looks for Answers to Suicide
New York, N.Y. This year’s Fountain House Symposium and Luncheon took on a formidable subject. Titled “Suicide: Looking for Answers,” the event recently drew more than 500 attendees to The Pierre in support of the innovative mental health programs of Fountain House, winner of the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize. In light of recent reports that suicide […]
Film ‘Margarita With A Straw’ – Unexpected Brilliance – From India
New York, N.Y. The film Margarita With A Straw is so unexpectedly brilliant, on so many levels, that I was completely mesmerized. Focused on taboo within taboo, the fragility of our collective human condition and the joy and possibility of life, the film is required viewing. Not knowing as much about Indian cinema as I […]
First Indian Literary Festival at Columbia a Best Seller
New York, N.Y. Under the direction of my good friend Aroon Shivdasani, the first literary festival of the Indian American Arts Council (IAAC) with Columbia University drew participants from Bombay to Brooklyn and Berkley – including glitterati such as literary giant Sir Salman Rushdie, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar of Disgraced fame, and […]
Roosevelt Island Prepares for Third Annual Cherry Blossom Festival
New York, N.Y. Warm weather is upon us at last, and with it comes the Third Annual Roosevelt Island Cherry Blossom Festival. Located under the 59th Street Bridge, across from the United Nations, Roosevelt Island has 600 incredible cherry trees. With the opening of FDR Four Freedom Park, a $50 million improvement to the island […]
Ambassador: From the Killing Fields to the White House
New York, N.Y. I first met Ambassador Sichan Siv in 2004 when I was invited to hear him speak at the imposing Women’s Republican National Club, just north of Rockefeller Center. What a speech! He spoke on surviving Pol Pot’s Killing Fields in Cambodia, then making his way to America where he earned a degree […]
