Hawa Allan –Ms. Allan is a lawyer and writer of cultural criticism whose work has appeared in Best African American Essays: 2009.  She previously worked at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and is a graduate of The University of Chicago and Columbia Law School.

Donald R. Asch – Mr. Asch is a retired senior management consulting executive.  He spent most of his working career at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), serving clients in a broad range of industries out of the firm’s Boston, Madrid, and New York offices.  He has also been active in the non-profit sector, both as consultant and Board member, with organizations in the fields of education, social services, and the performing arts.  Mr. Asch has a B.A. degree in Mathematics from Cornell University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.  Mr. Asch serves on the Strategic Planning Committee and the Financial Oversight Committee of Behind the Book.  

Denise Bell –A co-founder of Behind the Book, Ms. Bell was Director of Development from 2003-2007.  She now works at Amnesty International USA, where she directs the Darfur Campaign on ending the conflict in the western region of Sudan.  Before Behind the Book, she worked at PEN American Center as the coordinator of Readers & Writers, a national reading-promotion program working with more than 3,000 low-income children and adults annually. Ms. Bell earned a B.A. in History and English from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a M.A. in History from the University of Cambridge, England.  She left a Ph.D. program in History at Northwestern University to pursue a career in human rights.  Ms. Bell serves on the Strategic Planning and Governance Committees of Behind the Book.   

Casey Cornelius - Ms. Cornelius is the Associate Vice President for marketing and development in the Princeton Review's Supplemental Educational Services division, which provides free after-school tutoring for low-income youth in 15 states. She has previously worked in educational publishing and taught literature and composition at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has a BA from The College of William and Mary and an MFA from VCU.

Susan Davison – Ms. Davison is a licensed real estate agent with Tarvin Realtors.  Previous to joining the Board of Behind the Book, she served as the president of the Ridgewood Friends of the Library where she oversaw several major fundraising events.  Ms. Davison holds an MBA from New York University and BA from the University of Connecticut.  Her favorite book is Stuart Little.

Muffie Meyer – A co-founder of Middlemarch Films, Ms. Meyer has produced and directed more than 100 films, including Benjamin Franklin, which won the 2003 Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Special.  She has produced Liberty!, a major series on PBS, and Behind the Scenes, a ten-part PBS series on the arts for eight- to twelve-year-old children.  Ms. Meyer serves on the Strategic Planning Committee of Behind the Book.

Aliya J. Newkirk – Partner of a Manhattan private-practice law firm specializing in business transactions and commercial litigation, Ms. Newkirk also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Logic and Argumentation at the College of New Rochelle School of New Resources.  The recipient of a B.A. degree in Political Science and Art History from Rutgers College, Ms. Newkirk subsequently earned her J.D. degree from Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.  

Francine Prose – Ms. Prose is the author of the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, as well as fourteen books of fiction, including A Changed Man, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award.  A film of her novel, Household Saints (1981), was released in 1993.  Her stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Die Zeit, and Harper’s, where she is a contributing editor.  She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, and was a Director's Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.  In addition, she has taught literature and writing for more than 20 years at major universities.

Ben Solarz - Mr. Solarz is an Analyst in the Blackstone Corporate Private Equity Group, where he works with companies in a broad range of industries. Prior to joining Blackstone, Mr. Solarz worked at the Yale Investments Office, where he helped to invest the University’s c. $20 billion endowment.  Mr. Solarz received a BA in Economics from Yale University, where he graduated summa cum laude, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and earned the Jonathan Edwards Fellows' Prize for attaining the highest scholastic standing in Jonathan Edwards College.

Sharon Tietelbaum - Ms. Teitelbaum has been a press representative for CBS and NBC, assistant director of community affairs for CBS, and co-president of the Parents Association at a New York City school.  She holds a BA from the University of Chicago and an MA from Brandeis University where she concentrated on immigration history. 

Jo Umans, Executive Director/Founder - Jo Umans started a career in television production where she worked for more than 25 years. She was an Associate Director and Script Supervisor on shows including Good Morning America, Kate and Allie, The Chris Rock Show, and Liberty! The American Revolution. For the last five years of her tv career, she also worked part-time as a school librarian, and for two years ran the visiting-author program, where she observed that a series of classroom-based author visits linking the reading of a book to meeting the author excited students interest in reading. Determined to bring that transformative experience to public school children in New York City, she left her career in television to found Behind the Book.

Ms. Umans has participated in numerous workshops at the Support Center for Nonprofit Management in New York City in the areas of financial management, partnership building, fundraising, and board leadership. In July 2005, she studied at the Content Area Literacies Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University, to maintain her currency in literacy trends. In July 2006, she completed a professional course at New York University on small business growth management. In winter 2007, she received a scholarship for twelve sessions of executive coaching. In 2008, she was accepted to the United Way Executive Fellows program. She has been a judge for the Random House Senior Writing Competition for the last two years and served on an awards panel for the Department of Cultural Affairs.

Ms. Umans graduated with a B.S. degree from Boston University a very long time ago.

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