“I am honored to take the helm of this remarkable institution,” said Welters, who is currently vice chair and has been a board member since 1997. “I greatly appreciate the lessons that I have learned in leadership and philanthropy from Lester Pollack. I see this as a defining moment in the history of the Law School.” Moving forward, he said, NYU Law needs to make sure that financial barriers are not a factor in students’ attendance of or participation in the school.

Dean Richard Revesz said he is “thrilled” that Welters will assume the chairmanship. “Tony is one of our nation’s leading entrepreneurs and an inspirational philanthropist,” said Revesz, noting that Welters’s “extraordinary generosity and vision” are responsible for the AnBryce Scholarship, a 10-year-old NYU Law program that offers full scholarships and support to exceptional J.D. students who were severely economically disadvantaged and are the first in their families to pursue graduate studies. “Tony’s bold leadership of the Law School’s capital campaign will allow us to continue to set ambitious goals,” Revesz added.

Welters is executive vice president of UnitedHealth Group (UHG) in Washington, D.C., and president of UHG’s Public and Senior Markets Group, which includes the Ovations and AmeriChoice business units. Ovations is the largest U.S. company dedicated to meeting the health and well-being of people age 50 and older. Welters previously was president and chief executive officer of AmeriChoice Corporation, which he founded as Healthcare Management Alternatives in 1989 with $200,000 in seed money. Under his leadership, the company became a thriving enterprise and was acquired in 2002 by United Healthcare.

After graduating from NYU Law, Welters worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission, spent two years as the executive assistant to Senator Jacob Javits ’26 and then held various positions at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In 1995, Welters, who grew up with three brothers in a one-room tenement in Harlem, and his wife, Beatrice, launched the AnBryce Foundation. The goal: to cultivate young minds from under-resourced and challenging environments for lives of personal and professional success. They first launched Camp Dogwood Summer Academy, a residential and educational program for needy youths. The AnBryce Scholarship followed in 1998. The Welters have contributed major gifts to the Law School of $11.5 million; this year, they committed an additional $7.5 million as a matching gift to complete the needed endowment of the AnBryce Scholarship. They also funded a chaired law professorship for a faculty mentor to oversee the academic components of the program, which reached its target of 10 students per J.D. class in 2007. Additionally, they have donated another $10 million to the NYU Partners Fund.

A vice chair of NYU Law’s trustee budget and finance committee, Welters also chairs the campaign steering committee and has been instrumental in helping NYU meet its goal of $400 million. In 2004, he received the Vanderbilt Award, the highest honor bestowed upon an NYU Law graduate.

A dedicated philanthropist, Welters is vice chair of the Morehouse School of Medicine’s board of directors. He serves on the boards of the Smithsonian Institution, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans and the Healthcare Leadership Council. He has received the National Medical Fellowships Humanitarian Award, the Horatio Alger Award and the African American Chamber of Commerce Chairman’s Award.

—

All 2008 Features

All of 2008 Alumni Almanac

2008 Home

“It has been exciting to lead such a talented group of trustees, and to partner with two dynamic and visionary deans,” said Pollack. “The Law School has experienced a remarkable transformation, rising to become one of the most outstanding academic centers in our nation with a global presence. I am confident that the Law School will continue to reach new heights under Tony Welters.”

The Law School community owes “a huge debt of gratitude” to Pollack, Dean Richard Revesz said, noting Pollack’s key role in the 1970s in establishing the Law School’s governance arrangements, including the Board of Trustees. “His visionary leadership has been essential to our success, and his extraordinary generosity is reflected in the Pollack Center for Law & Business and thebreathtaking colloquium room in Furman Hall.”

Pollack is founder and chairman of Centre Partners Management, a private equity firm, where he has been a managing director since 1986. He serves on the board of Bank Leumi USA and is director emeritus of U.S. Bancorp. He has served as director of numerous corporations, including the Loews Corporation, Paramount Communications, SunAmerica Inc. and Tidewater Inc.

A University trustee from 1987 through this summer, Pollack chairs the board of NYU’s National Center on Philanthropy and the Law. Widely known for his humanitarian and philanthropic work, Pollack was chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and honorary chair of the Anti-Defamation League. Last year Pollack received the Edward Weinfeld Award from the Law School Alumni Association and NYU’s Albert Gallatin Medal in recognition of his professional achievements, commitment to philanthropy and dedication to NYU.

—

All of 2008 Alumni Almanac

2008 Home

Before the Court handed down its verdict, a panel including lawyers from both sides of the case and faculty experts in election law analyzed New York’s convention process and debated the value of judicial elections, during the NYU Law Alumni Association’s annual fall lecture, “Are New York Judicial Elections in Crisis?”

Moderator Samuel Issacharoff, Bonnie and Richard Reiss Professor of Constitutional Law, provided background. Surrogate Judge Margarita López-Torres first sued the New York State Board of Elections in 2004 after she claimed that her refusal to hire the daughter of a prominent Democrat as a clerk led to the denial of her nomination to run for a spot on the State Supreme Court. The suit alleged that the closed convention process allowed the spurned party boss to give the nod to another judge. Issacharoff pointed out the inherent constitutional difficulty in deciding a case like López-Torres. “We pride ourselves on being a democracy and living under a constitutional order,” he said, “but our constitution says very little about the greater future of our democracy, which is how people get elected.”

Richard Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law, saw López-Torres as just one flare-up in the greater epidemic of troubling judicial elections. He suggested changing the event’s title to “Are Judicial Elections a Crisis?” calling them “a truly bad idea” and the worst American contribution to the design of government and law.

No other nation holds judicial elections, which lead some to wonder how a judge remains impartial while seeking contributions and political endorsements. Lawrence Mandelker ’68, an election-law expert and then-president of the NYU Law Alumni Association, discussed the pros and cons of elective versus appointive methods of judicial selection, noting that while López-Torres involves important constitutional issues concerning specific methods of nominating candidates, “it does not address the normative question of whether it’s a good idea for judges to be elected in the first place.”

In the basic argument of López-Torres, however, critics allege conventions violate the First Amendment by denying voters a direct choice in whom to nominate, and that they lack transparency and give political party leaders, not rank-and-file party members, the power to choose judicial candidates. It is the secrecy of these “smoke-filled rooms” that panelist Kent Yalowitz said promotes corruption and undue favoritism in judicial nominations. “Every district in New York, for every party, is controlled by one person,” said Yalowitz, who has represented López-Torres since 2004. “Party members who want to participate in the system get frozen out.”

But Caitlin Halligan, the former solicitor general for New York, argued that political parties have the right to opt for a closed convention nominating system. Andrew Rossman, counsel of record for the Manhattan Democratic Party in López-Torres, further explained that New York’s system was enacted by a 1921 law designed to stop judges from having to take campaign contributions during their primary and election campaigns. “[Lawmakers] didn’t do this in a vacuum,” Rossman said. “They did it after a nine-year experiment with primaries that proved to be a complete failure.”

Alas, the final word was not to be found in the Supreme Court decision in January 2008. By ruling unanimously that New York’s conventions are constitutional, the Court placed the responsibility on lawmakers in Albany to continue to determine New York’s system of judicial nominations.

—

All of 2008 Alumni Almanac

2008 Home

Since taking office in January 2003, Esserman has exhibited a compassionate leadership style, showing up at nearly every homicide scene and at every wake. “He shows that we care tremendously when someone gets hurt in this city,” says Gross.

A one-time lawyer and a friend of former NYC Police Chief William Bratton, Esserman is credited with cleaning up a corrupt department and cutting crime. “He’s a consensus builder,” says Bratton, now head of the Los Angeles police. “He’s a listener. He’s an inspirational leader, and he’s liked by the community.”

When Esserman arrived in Providence, the police “had become a king’s army,” he says, in which the former mayor—convicted of racketeering conspiracy—controlled the police force with cronyism and payoffs. Positions and promotions could be bought for $3,500 to $5,000.

David Cicilline, the new mayor, gave him carte blanche. “I had the entire command staff retire, and I promoted great people who never played the game to get ahead,” says Esserman. One of his first actions was to decentralize—dividing the city into nine districts with a neighborhood police substation in each. He also embraced the community policing model in which cops walk the beat to identify neighborhood concerns and consult the appropriate social service agencies. Equally key, he adopted the weekly CompStat (computer statistics) strategy meetings that Bratton had used in NYC, tracking crime and holding precinct commanders accountable for bringing the numbers down.

Results-oriented and innovative, Esserman launched successful programs to combat drugs and violence: One gives corrigible drug offenders a second chance, and another created a gun task force after a 14-year-old boy was shot by a friend.

Providence has seen a steady drop in violent crime since Esserman took office. According to figures provided by Providence officials, murders were above the national rate in 2002 and reached par by 2007, a 39 percent drop. Rape fell 64 percent; robbery dropped 30 percent, and aggravated assault, 17 percent. “The police department in Providence is helping to bring crime rates down at a time when, across the nation, crime rates are stubbornly stable,” says Andrew Karmen, criminologist at John Jay College.

Esserman was raised in a progressive Jewish home in Manhattan that became “a salon” on weekends, filled with musicians and artists whom his physician dad treated for free. Every summer his father volunteered in developing nations and took his family along. “That’s how I learned about service,” says Esserman. He vividly remembers helping his father stitch up a Guatemalan man’s arm that had been sliced open with a machete, and decided to follow his dad into medicine.

In high school at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, he trained as an EMT and volunteered in the Central Park Medical Rescue unit. He realized that police are the first responders at most accidents, and should be trained as medics. “For police to see themselves simply as law enforcers misses the point,” he says. After entering Dartmouth College, he created a medical rescue unit for the NYC Transit Police, and raised enough money to send officers to Dartmouth to study Spanish.

Esserman nonetheless dropped medicine and graduated from Dartmouth in 1979 as a history major. A year later, he entered NYU School of Law: “NYU was the doorway to the beginning of my career as a prosecutor, which started my career in law enforcement.” In 1987, Esserman left the district attorney’s office to become general counsel to the NYC Transit Police. Bratton became chief of the transit police in 1990, and their two years together would prove deeply transformative. In 1991, Esserman made the unprecedented move to police work. “He liked the nuts and bolts of policing and understood he could make more of a difference,” says Bratton.

Esserman landed a job as the assistant police chief in New Haven, Connecticut, and entered the police academy. “I was the oldest recruit and the highest ranking,” Esserman says proudly. He graduated in 1992, the year he married Gilda Hernandez, a detective turned school administrator. They have three children.

Esserman now earns $158,000 a year as police chief—slightly less than a first-year associate at some of the large firms. “I don’t regret that, not even for a minute,” he says. “I’ve been shot at. I’ve put handcuffs on a lot of people, and I’ve delivered eight babies. I’ve done a lot more than I thought I would when I put on that uniform way back when.”

—

All of 2008 Alumni Almanac

2008 Home

Four years later as Hurricane Katrina approached, a reluctant Sothern and his wife left for Oxford, Mississippi, where they watched the suffering and devastation on television as thousands of residents, most of them poor, black and elderly, were abandoned and left to die in the rising waters. The nation was shocked to see images of New Orleans that compared to third-world countries, but Sothern responds that the “city had long displayed such signs to anyone who cared to look at them.”

Returning to his pre-Emancipationera home less than two months after the storm, Sothern began writing a series of essays that were published in The Nation, Paris Review, Salon and elsewhere. In 2007, those and new essays were assembled into Sothern’s first book, Down in New Orleans, which he describes as “an interrogation of the conservative notion that a government which governs least, governs best.” In this first-person account of the year following the storm, Sothern lays bare the federal government’s failures in response to the disaster, and ties in the myriad racial and social-justice issues that continue to plague the city.

Now the director of the Capital Appeals Project, Sothern represents death-row inmates from across Louisiana in trial and post-conviction appeals. In Louisiana v. Kennedy, which went before the Supreme Court in April, Sothern’s office directed Patrick Kennedy’s appeal and served as cocounsel in the case. Sothern was also recently awarded a Soros media fellowship to write his next book, Put Childish Things Away, about unfair prison sentencing.

Senior Writer Graham Reed spoke with Sothern about his first book, Down in New Orleans, and life as a New Orleans resident three years after Hurricane Katrina.

Your book reads like a catharsis. Why treat this national tragedy so personally? I was a part of the story, so to disengage that would be to tell only half of it. Besides, my vantage point as a lawyer provided a lens to view the broader social-justice issues in the city.

How has your work changed as a result of Katrina? The storm and its exposure of the wholesale failure of the government to address the needs of people widened my sense of mandate to write not only about what I know as an attorney, but to look at other issues—public housing, urban poverty—that impact my clients’ lives.

Your description of the poverty and racism is overwhelming. How do you stay hopeful that things can be improved? I believe that what people saw in New Orleans was horrifying to them. I hope the disaster was the pendulum’s apex for governance that leaves the weakest to fend for themselves under difficult circumstances.

Are you still committed to calling New Orleans your home? My wife and I have this big old falling-over place that we’ll be fixing up for the next 25 or 30 years. I’d no sooner leave New Orleans than anyone would their home in a time of great need.

—

All of 2008 Alumni Almanac

2008 Home

For the chief of a department that oversees a staff of 2,300 and collects $23 billion in taxes from New York residents every year, that’s a handy attribute to have. Martha Stark is the recipient of the NYU Law Women’s third annual Alumna of the Year Award and the city’s first African-American woman to serve as finance commissioner. She holds a complex job: The finance department not only collects the city’s property and business taxes, but also runs the city treasury, records all mortgages and deeds and even adjudicates parking tickets. That last item explains why she’s so attached to the retired meter parked behind her desk.

Stark is not your typical bureaucrat. Her office is jam-packed with an eclectic mix of objects, from a basketball net to a Jamaican cooking pot. A Mr. Potato Head shares space with an antique bowling trophy on her credenza, and an inflatable SpongeBob hangs below a dartboard. “He can be whomever I want him to be when I throw those darts,” she chuckles. “It depends on who I’m mad at.”

That SpongeBob doesn’t have a single puncture hole says a lot about the 47-year-old Stark—and her aim. She has such an easygoing manner, it’s hard to imagine her angry at anyone. But don’t be fooled; Stark is no pushover. “She keeps you on your toes,” says Mary Gotsopoulis, chief administrative law judge for Finance’s adjudication division, who reports to her. “She may not agree with you, but she’ll always listen to what you have to say. You have to really convince her though, because she knows every aspect of this agency. She’s very hands-on.”

Stark’s detailed grasp of how her agency works again demonstrates her innate talent for pushing aside noise and static to focus on what’s important. That helps explain her natural affinity with math and statistics. Born and raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn, this graduate of Brooklyn Tech High School has been intrigued with numbers since she played math games with her bookkeeper father, a high school dropout who taught her to fill out tax returns when she was 15. “I believe in the power of numbers,” she said in a 2006 commentary on the National Public Radio program All Things Considered. “Maybe it is just that numbers don’t lie.” So when you hear Stark say with utter sincerity, “I have a passion for property tax,” you can’t help believing her. For Stark, her job is the equivalent of a math junkie’s Nirvana: the intersection of policy, law and numbers, a place she firmly believes has a direct impact on people’s lives.

Her stint as finance commissioner—she was appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2002—is not her first in city government. She served in several management positions in the city’s finance department under Mayor David Dinkins from 1990 to 1993. Among her accomplishments: the establishment of a unit that allows for the arbitration of business tax disputes. In 1993, she was named a White House Fellow, assigned to the Department of State. She has also worked as the head of policy operations under Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger.

Stark didn’t always intend to work for government. At first, she thought she wanted to be a journalist, but after a serious biking accident in 1980 during her junior year at NYU, she changed her mind. To make up for time lost due to her hospitalization, she switched majors to political science, which eventually led her to law school. That was the positive aftereffect of her accident; the negative robbed her, at least in the short run, of her other passion: basketball. As an undergrad, she played forward for NYU—and now she frequently cheers on her favorite Women’s National Basketball Association team, the Liberty.

Her love of basketball and the discipline and teamwork it requires fits into her can-do approach to the law. While she worked as a tax attorney for only four years before she moved into city government, she believes that studying the law helped her figure out how to effectively push for change. “Knowing the law matters,” she says. “But far too often we say, ‘Here are the rules; this is what you can’t do.’ What’s great about the law is that the rules can be changed. It gives you the freedom and the flexibility to be creative.”

In the end, that’s what matters most to Stark: using her prodigious intellectual, legal and financial skills to keep the city’s ship afloat.

—

All of 2008 Alumni Almanac

2008 Home