David Skorton – Chairman

David J. Skorton, Cornell University's 12th President, is a cardiologist, professor of biomedical engineering, and professor in the Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is past chair of the Business-Higher Education Forum, an independent, nonprofit organization of industry CEOs, leaders of colleges and universities, and foundation executives; life member of the Council on Foreign Relations; and member of the board of Directors of the Association of American Medical Colleges. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. President Skorton has long been active in regional and state economic development. During 2009 he chaired a gubernatorial Task Force on Diversifying the New York State Economy through Industry-Higher Education Partnerships. Cornell University is home to the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine, which includes the Cornell Equine Hospital.

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Anthony J. Bonomo

Anthony Bonomo, Esq. is President of Administrators for the Professions, Inc., the insurance company management organization that operates, among others, Physicians’ Reciprocal Insurers, a medical professional liability insurer. Mr. Bonomo acquired AFP in 2006, having joined the company in 1986 and served as its President since 1995. Under his direction, the companies have grown dramatically while creating and implementing national, award-winning risk management programs for medical practices. Mr. Bonomo holds B.A. and J.D. degrees from St. John’s University, and has served as a Trustee of Hofstra University. He founded the GAELS Foundation, which is dedicated to the development of youth through sports. Passionate about horse racing and thoroughbred aftercare, Mr. Bonomo and his wife MaryEllen campaign horses under the banners of Brooklyn Boyz Stables and MEB Stables.

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Rick Cotton

Rick Cotton was named Executive Vice President and General Counsel of NBCUniversal in August 2004. He supervises the NBCUniversal Law Department, which provides legal advice to all NBCUniversal business units. In addition, he oversees NBCUniversal's global regulatory and legislative policy agenda, including the company’s worldwide anti-piracy efforts. From 2000 to 2004, Cotton served as President and managing Director of London-based CNBC Europe and has been at NBC since 1989. From 1991 to 2000, he served as Chair of the Board of the public-private New York Primary Care Development Corporation. He was appointed the deputy executive secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare under Secretary Joseph A. Califano in 1977 and was named the executive secretary in 1978. In 1980 he became the special counsel to Deputy Secretary John Sawhill of the U.S. Department of Energy. Mr. Cotton is a graduate of Harvard University and received his J.D. from Yale Law School.

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Michael J. Del Giudice

Mr. Del Giudice has been Chairman and Senior Managing Director of Rockland Capital, LLC, New York, NY, a private equity company focusing on power and energy infrastructure markets, since 2003 and Senior Managing Director at Millennium Capital Markets LLC, New York, NY, an investment banking firm, since 1996.  Previously, Mr. Del Giudice was a General Partner at Lazard Frères & Co. LLC, and also served as Secretary to the New York State Governor Mario Cuomo, Director of State Operations to Governor Hugh Carey, and Chief of Staff to the New York State Assembly Speaker.  Mr. Del Giudice serves as Lead Director of Con Edison, Inc., and also serves as a Director of Fusion Telecommunications International, Inc., Reis, Inc., and FNBNY Bancorp, Inc.

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Michael Dubb

Michael Dubb is the Principal and Founder of the Beechwood Organization, among the largest homebuilders in the United States. He is a two time past President of the Long Island Builder's Institute, has been a Board Member of the Long Island Housing Partnership and is currently an Associate Trustee of the North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset. In 2002, Mr. Dubb built and donated a 7,500 square-foot day care center, Anna House, for the children of NYRA backstretch workers at Aqueduct and Belmont Park. He serves as Chairman of the Board of the Belmont Child Care Association, which operates Anna House. An avid horseman, Mr. Dubb was the leading thoroughbred owner on the NYRA circuit in 2011 and 2012 and has campaigned stakes winners including Alysweep, Bill Place, Grace Hall, and Silver Timber.

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C. Steven Duncker

C. Steven Duncker graduated Cum Laude from Duke University in 1980 and attended the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, where he received his MM, Finance in 1982. Immediately following, he was hired by Goldman Sachs & Company, where he first worked in St. Louis, then Chicago. Mr. Duncker moved to New York and became Vice President in 1986, and was named partner in 1996. In 2001, he retired as partner after successfully running the Global Credit Derivative Department. Boards on which Mr. Duncker serves include the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders’ Association, the Jockey Club Information Systems, and Equibase, Inc. He is Founder and Trustee of the C. Steven Duncker Foundation, which is dedicated to providing educational opportunities to disadvantaged children. Mr. Duncker is an avid thoroughbred owner and breeder racing in New York, New Jersey, Kentucky and Florida.

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Bobby Flay

Bobby Flay is an award-winning chef and restauranteur with a strong interest in thoroughbred racing. Mr. Flay opened Mesa Grill, his first restaurant, in 1991. Mesa Grill was named "Best Restaurant 1992" by New York Magazine's Gael Greene. He opened Bolo Restaurant & Bar opened in November 1993 in the Flatiron district. That same year, Mr. Flay was voted the James Beard Foundation's Rising Star Chef of the Year, an award that honors the country's most accomplished chef under the age of 30. In April 2005, he opened Bar Americain, featuring regional American cuisine. In June 2006, he opened his first steakhouse, Bobby Flay Steak, at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. In addition to his restaurants, Mr. Flay shares his knowledge and enthusiasm for food through his cookbooks and his many national cooking shows on the Food Network, Cooking Channel and NBC. Mr. Flay is also a horse owner and racing enthusiast, having campaigned stakes winners including Her Smile, More Than Real, and Sensational Slam.

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Stuart S. Janney, III

Stuart S. Janney III is the Chairman of Bessemer Trust Company, Bessemer Trust Company, N.A., Bessemer Group, Inc., Bessemer Trust Company of Florida and Bessemer Securities Corporation since January 1995. In 1970, Mr. Janney graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a B.A. and in 1973 he received his J.D. from the University of Maryland. From 1973-76, Mr. Janney held several positions in the Federal government and in 1977 he joined Niles, Barton & Wilmer, a Baltimore law firm, where he was a partner. From 1986-94 he was a Managing Director of Alex Brown & Sons in charge of Asset Management. He currently serves as Vice Chairman of the Jockey Club and on also the Boards of the Keeneland Association, and the King Ranch, Inc.  He is a trustee of The Johns Hopkins University, John Hopkins Medicine and Chairman of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.

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Earle Mack

Earle Mack is a Senior Partner at the Mack Company and a former member of the Board of Directors for Mack-Cali Realty Corp. Mr. Mack served as United States Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Finland from May 2004 until November 2005. Chairman of the New York State Racing Commission from 1983 to 1989, Mr. Mack has served in many positions in the public and private sector of the thoroughbred racing and breeding industry. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Drexel University and attended Fordham University School of Law. As a horse owner, Mr. Mack has campaigned stakes winners including Currency Arbitrage, Excellent Tipper, Icabad Crane, and November Snow.

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Robert Megna

Robert Megna is the New York State Budget Director, having served in the capacity since 2009. He is responsible for the overall development and management of the State’s fiscal policy, including overseeing the preparation of budget recommendations for all State agencies and programs, economic and revenue forecasting, tax policy, fiscal planning, capital financing and management of the State’s debt portfolio, as well as pensions and employee benefits. Mr. Megna previously served as the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, responsible for overseeing the collection and accounting of more $90 billion in State and local taxes, the administration of State and local taxes, including New York City and City of Yonkers income taxes and the processing of tax returns, registrations and associated documents. Mr. Megna is a graduate of Fordham University, and holds master’s degrees in public policy from Fordham and economics from the London School of Economics.

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Barry Ostrager

Barry R. Ostrager is a senior litigation Partner at Simpson, Thatcher, & Bartlett LLP, and from 1999-2011 was Head of the Litigation Department. He has tried dozens of cases and argued scores of appeals throughout the country and has been prominently involved in many high-profile securities, anti-trust, and commercial cases. Mr. Ostrager was named the “Leading U.S. Litigation Business Trial Lawyer” by Chambers & Partners and was recognized as one of the “Top Ten Trial Lawyers” in the U.S. by The Legal 500 for eight consecutive years. Mr. Ostrager has been involved in thoroughbred breeding and racing for the last 30 years, and currently operates Questroyal North, a stallion station and boarding facility eight miles from Saratoga Race Course. He has successfully bred and raced numerous stakes winners. Mr. Ostrager has been a Director of the New York Thoroughbred Breeders since 2000 and currently serves as the organization’s President. He is a member of the Jockey Club, serves on the Board of Directors of Santuary for Families, and is a trustee of Temple Emanu-El (New York City).

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Leonard Riggio

Leonard Riggio is the Chairman of Barnes & Noble, Inc., a Fortune 500 company, which is the world’s largest bookseller. Beginning with a single college bookstore in 1965, Mr. Riggio built one of the largest enterprises in the history of American retail, now employing over 50,000 booksellers. He is widely known as a visionary in the bookselling industry, and a brilliant marketer and entrepreneur. Mr. Riggio is also the founder of GameStop (NYSE: GME), the largest multi-channel video game retailer, which operates 7,000 stores worldwide. Mr. Riggio devotes himself to many philanthropic initiatives, including building and donating homes to families who lost theirs in Hurricane Katrina. Since 2005, he and his wife, Louise, have built and donated 101 homes to New Orleans families with another 100 homes slated for construction. Mr. Riggio is the owner of My Meadowview LLC, a thoroughbred racing and breeding business.

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Jane Rosenthal

Jane Rosenthal is an acclaimed producer and the co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival. She has distinguished herself as a leading film producer with a roster of both critically and commercially acclaimed films. Ms. Rosenthal has been featured numerous times in Variety’s Women in Showbiz, The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment and Crain's New York Business “100 Most Influential Women in NYC Business” issues. Ms. Rosenthal has produced one of the highest grossing comedy franchises of all times, Meet The Parents (2000) and its sequels Meet The Fockers (2004) and Little Fockers (2010); the box office sensation Analyze This (1999) and its sequelAnalyze That (2002); the Academy Award©-nominated Wag the Dog (1997); and critically acclaimed films Marvin’s Room(1996) and About a Boy (2002). She has produced over 20 major films including The Good Shepherd, Rent and A Bronx Tale. In 1989, Ms. Rosenthal co-founded Tribeca Production and the Tribeca Film Center in the lower Manhattan neighborhood of TriBeCa with actor Robert De Niro. In 2002, Ms. Rosenthal organized the first annual Tribeca Film Festival, which has grown into a major international cultural event.

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Joseph Spinelli

Joseph Spinelli is Managing Director in the Global Investigations and Compliance Practice, and serves as Global Leader of the Anti-Bribery & Corruption Practice at Navigant Consulting. Appointed in 1986, he spent eight years as New York State's first ever Inspector General, leading fraud, abuse, waste and corruption investigations for all New York State agencies and authorities. Prior to his appointment as Inspector General, Mr. Spinelli served as a Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in both the New York and New Haven field offices. Mr. Spinelli also served as an Independent Fiscal Monitor during the post-Sept. 11 recovery effort at the World Trade Center, with investigative, compliance and monitoring responsibilities. In 2004, Mr. Spinelli was elected to the Board of Regents of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, an international professional association with 40,000 members. In February 2010, Mr. Spinelli was appointed to the New York State Commission on Public Integrity. He is a graduate of Ricker College and earned his J.D. at the John Marshall School of Law.

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Stuart Subotnick

Stuart Subotnick is President and CEO of Metromedia Company, a general partnership made up of public and private companies. Mr. Subotnick joined the former Metromedia, Inc. as a tax manager in 1967, was promoted to CFO in 1980, and was one of the principal architects of the leveraged buyout which took the company private in 1984. Subotnick has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Baruch College and earned his J.D. at Brooklyn Law School. Subotnick and his wife, Anita, formed Anstu Stable in 1992 and together have campaigned a number of stakes winners including Balto Star, Friendly Island, I’m All Yours and Mellow Roll. 

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Vincent Tese

Mr. Tese is a lawyer, investment advisor and cable television executive, and is currently the Executive Chairman of Bond Street Holdings, LLC as well as the Executive Chairman of its subsidiary, Florida Community Bank. He is also a Director of several corporations, including Cablevision Systems Corporation, ICE Clear Credit LLC, Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., Mack-Cali Realty Corporation and Madison Square Garden. In addition, he is Trustee of New York University School of Law and New York Presbyterian Hospital. Mr. Tese has served in state government in a number of positions. He served as State Superintendent of Banks from 1981 to 1983, in March 1985 was named Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Urban Development Corporation, and in 1987, was named Director of Economic Development for New York State, which added to his portfolio the titles of Commissioner of the Department of Economic Development and Chairman of both the Science and Technology Foundation and the Job Development Authority. He was appointed a Commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 1991 and elected its vice chairman in 1992. Mr. Tese also chaired the New York State Advisory Commission on Racing in the 21st Century. Mr. Tese received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Pace University in 1966 and following two years as first lieutenant with the US Army, a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School in 1972 and the L.L.M. in Taxation from New York University School of Law in 1973.

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Charles V. Wait

Charles V. Wait is President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of The Adirondack Trust Company. Mr. Wait began his banking career with The Adirondack Trust Company in 1974 after graduating from Cornell University. In 1982 he was elected as a Director, in 1984 as President and in 1989 as Chairman of the Board and CEO. Mr. Wait currently serves as a Director of the New York Bankers Association, as a member of the Saratoga County Water Authority, as a Director of Victaulic Inc., as a Director of the Museum of American Finance, and as a Member of the Center for Economic Growth. Mr. Wait has also held positions on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Skidmore College, Empire State College Foundation, New York Business Development Corporation and the Yaddo Corporation.

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Chester F. Broman, ex-officio

Chester Broman is Owner, President, and CEO of Clifford Broman & Son, Inc., a general contracting company. Chester and his wife Mary began breeding and racing thoroughbreds in the 1990s and are the owners of Chestertown Farm, a 300-acre property in Chestertown, NY. The Bromans have campaigned stakes winners including Friends Lake, Mineralogist, and Friend Or Foe.

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John Hendrickson, Special Advisor

John Hendrickson is the President and Chief Operating Officer of Whitney Industries, a logging and real estate company, and President of Mary Lou Whitney Stables. He is also a former aide to Governor Walter Joseph Hickel of Alaska. In 2007, Mr. Hendrickson and his wife, Mary Lou Whitney, initiated the Backstretch Appreciation program, a meal and activity program for backstretch workers at Saratoga Race Course. Mr. Hendrickson serves as the Governor's representative to the NYRA Reorganization Board on issues involving Saratoga Race Course and the surrounding community.

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Michael Kotlikoff, Special Advisor

Dr. Kotlikoff received his B.A. and V.M.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, and his Ph.D. degree in Physiology from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Kotlikoff is well acquainted with equine practice and research. Prior to veterinary school he worked at the equine hospital at New Bolton Center for several years and worked as a student with equine veterinarians at Delaware Park. He currently chairs the Harry M. Zweig Equine Research Committee at Cornell. Kotlikoff joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary School in 1984 and was jointly appointed in the Department of Medicine in the School of Medicine. In 1995 he was named Chair of the Department of Animal Biology and Director of the Center for Animal Transgenesis and Germ Cell Research. In 1999, Dr. Kotlikoff was recruited to Cornell to Chair the newly formed Department of Biomedical Sciences and to Chair the Cornell Mammalian Genomics Task Force. He also directed the Cornell Transgenic Mouse facility from 2000 until 2007. In 2007, he was named the Austin O. Hooey Dean of the College, and was reappointed to that post in 2012. Dr. Kotlikoff has served on numerous editorial, advisory, and review boards, and currently chairs the Board of Scientific Counsellors of the National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health. His laboratory works on cardiovascular biology and heart repair, and he has been continuously funded by the NIH since 1985. He has trained more than 60 undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students and lectures on physiology, pharmacology, and genetics to veterinary students. Dr. Kotlikoff currently serves on the AVMA Council on Research. Dr. Kotlikoff serves as special advisor to the NYRA Reorganization Board for Equine Health and Safety.

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Richard A. Violette, Jr., ex-officio

Rick Violette is a thoroughbred trainer and the President of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, Inc (NYTHA). Mr. Violette graduated from Lowell University in Massachusetts and began working on the backstretch at Suffolk Downs.  He was an assistant to Emile Allain at Woodbine Racetrack in Canada for two years before moving to New York to serve as an assistant to David Whiteley.  Mr. Violette started his own public stable in 1983 and has developed many stakes winners including Read the Footnotes, Man from Wicklow, March Magic, Dream Rush and High Finance. Mr. Violette has served as Chairman of the New York Jockey Injury Compensation Fund for more than a decade and has been the President of the National Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association and a member of the Board of Directors of NYTHA for many years.

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