Stephen L. Norris - Chairman
Mr. Norris is co-founder of The Carlyle Group, a private global investment firm in Washington, D.C. He served on the Boards of Directors of major Carlyle portfolio companies, and helped recruit George W. Bush to serve as director of one of its portfolio companies in addition to enlisting former Secretary of State James Baker III and former Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci to be senior partners of Carlyle.
Mr. Norris also acted as a principal financial advisor to one of the world’s most successful investors, and helped structure and negotiated the highly successful recapitalization of Citibank. Mr. Norris' business relationships also made possible the investor’s subsequent investments in Euro Disney and Four Seasons Hotels. Mr. Norris has been a principal advisor and independent consultant in numerous transactions, including real estate investments in Europe and the United States. Currently Mr. Norris serves on the board of multiple corporations.
Mr. Norris was appointed by president George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as one of the five governing members of the over $100 billion Federal Retirement System -Thrift Investment Board. Mr. Norris earned a B.S. and a J.D. from the University of Alabama, an LLM (Tax) from New York University and was a fellow at Yale Law School.
Pamela Newman
Pamela J. Newman is Executive Vice President of AON Corporation and in that capacity is an international insurance broker specializing in Fortune 500 clients worldwide. Ms. Newman has extensive experience in working with major private equity groups, including The Blackstone Group, Veronis Suhler Stevenson, Heartland Industrial Partners, Easton Capital, Hermes, The Carlyle Group, Highfields Capital Management, Columbia Partners, Atlantic Capital Partners LLC, and Westwood Capital, LLC. She serves on the Board of RKO Pictures, as well as on its Executive Committee. She also serves on the Board of Interactive Metronome, Ivivi Technologies, Inc. and Chipwich Chippoppitty.
A member of the Medical Center Advisory Board of the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Newman is on the Board of the McGowan Transplant Center, the Brain Trauma Foundation, and American ORT. She also serves on the Board of Trustees of The American University of Paris, the Corporate Board of Carnegie Hall, the Associate Committee of The Julliard School, and is Vice Chairman of the Business Committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dr. Newman was also previously the President of the Financial Women's Association and is is a Fellow of the Foreign Policy Association.
Dr. Newman earned a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from The University of Michigan. She has co-authored two books; Organizational Communications and Behind Closed Doors; A Guide to Effective Meetings.
Robert Kasten
Senator Kasten is the President of Kasten & Company, an international banking and business consulting group. Mr. Kasten was previously a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin from 1981 to 1993, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1974 to 1978 and a member of the Wisconsin State Senate from 1972 to 1974. He was a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, a member of the Defense Subcommittee, and Chairman of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee, which has funding and oversight responsibility for all U.S. assistance programs, the Export-Import Bank, the World Bank, the multilateral development banks, and the Eastern European Development Bank. He also served on the Senate budget committee and was the ranking member on the Surface Transportation Subcommittee of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.
Senator Kasten served on the Board of Directors of the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce established to promote private enterprise and market-oriented reform worldwide. He has served as Chairman and Director of the Emerging Markets Group which managed the Democratic Century Fund, LLP, a hedge fund investing in emerging markets securities. He is also a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Senator Kasten has served on numerous boards of directors and is currently a Director of EarthWalk Communications, a Trustee of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and a Trustee of the American University in Cairo. Senator Kasten holds a B.A. in English from the University of Arizona and an MBA in Finance from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.
Y. Joseph Zhao
Dr. Joseph Zhao received his Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University in 1989 and is currently a Professor at the University of Minnesota. He has taught a wide range of courses at all levels on dynamic system modeling, optimization, and control. Dr. Zhao was elected a Professor of the Year by the students in his first year of teaching career and was awarded the Taylor Career Development Award for outstanding contributions to teaching in 1996. In 2006, he was again elected by the students to be a Professor of the Year.
Dr. Zhao’s main research area is optimization methods and their applications. He develops algorithms for dynamic optimization, optimal decision-making across airborne networks, and complex system optimization, and applies these algorithms to study complex airspace systems such as the air traffic control. He has numerous publications in journals and lectures at professional conferences. In addition, Dr. Zhao has been active in community services in the last ten years. He has served in several nonprofit organizations as a volunteer and/or a board member.
Pia-Maria Norris
For the past 10 years Ms. Norris has been the international spokesperson for Isadora, one of the leading cosmetic labels in Europe. In years prior, Ms. Norris worked as a fashion model with Elite Model Management and other modeling agencies worldwide. Ms. Norris also co-hosted an entertainment television show on a major TV network in South America for 4 years. She was a celebrity judge at the Supermodel of the World Contest in 2005, and has participated in many other television productions, event organizations, and hosting of performances.
Born in Finland, where she received her marketing degree in 1987, Ms. Norris has since lived in 9 countries and speaks five languages. Over the course of her travels, Ms. Norris has gained an appreciation for diverse cultures and peoples. Her passion for eastern arts and cultures has always been especially strong, and she has worked extensively with various charitable efforts related to traditional Chinese arts and cultures as well as the improvement of human rights in Asia.