7 May 10
Robert W. Ball, Jr., BS (ChemE) '65, MS '66 (Eng). A Pittsford resident, Bob is retired from a thirty-four year career at Eastman Kodak where he served in various capacities as director, division business operations director for industrial engineering, and an engineering associate. He has also served as president, secretary, annual conferences committee member, and chair of the Rochester chapter, Institute of Industrial Engineering, and a member of the Rochester chapter's Project Management Institute. He is also a volunteer EMT with the Pittsford Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Inc., and served for fifty-eight years as scoutmaster, troop committee member, treasurer, district committee member, and council committee member, for which he received the Eagle Scout and Silver Beaver awards. He was director, treasurer, and president of the not-for-profit Asbury Day Care Center, Inc., for ten years, and a trustee, investment committee member, finance committee member, and chair of the Asbury First United Methodist Church. In his post-Cornell military career, he served to first lieutenant, US Army Chemical Corps, as a test officer at the Tropic Test Center in the then-Canal Zone. One of his daughters, Katherine Elizabeth Ball Sullivan is a 1995 alumna of Cornell (Delta Gamma) and his mother-in-law, Elsie Kinde Green, is a 1935 alumna of Cornell and past president of its Delta Gamma chapter. At Cornell, he was Tau Beta Pi, Pro-Ops, and the Pi Kappa Alpha representative to the IFC.
Michael J. Bilik, BA '08, JD '11 (expected). Mike is a second-year Cornell Law student. Mike graduated from Cornell's School of Arts & Sciences in 2008 with a B.A. in Government and as a member of the National Political Science Honor Society and the National Greek Honor Society - Order of Omega. While at Pike, he served in many leadership positions including Internal Vice-President, Sergeant-at-Arms, New Member Educator, Live-Out Representative, and Steward. During his tenure, he enacted many reforms within the fraternity, including the institutionalization of an internal judicial system. At Cornell Law, Mike is an officer of the Public Interest Law Union, an associate editor of the Cornell Journal of Law & Public Policy, and a fellow of the Peggy Browning Fund for Labor Law Studies.
Logan M. Cheek, III, AB '60. A Pittsford resident, Logan is Senior Managing Director (semi-retired) of Pittsford Ventures Management, a private equity LLC he founded in 1979. Prior to his private equity career, he was a group program manager at Xerox, and an associate with McKinsey and Company in New York and Düsseldorf, Germany, where he consulted on boardroom matters of strategy, policy, and organization with the CEOs of Chase Manhattan, Texaco, BASF, Deutsche Bank, and Volkswagen. In his post-Cornell military career, he served to the rank of captain in Army Intelligence, as an intelligence case officer in Europe and Vietnam, and as Chief of the East European Desk, US Army Headquarters, Europe. He received the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Army Commendation Medals. His late wife, Pamela L. Wilcox B.S. '63, his sister, Emily L. Cheek B.S. '66, and two cousins, Helen T. Hillhouse LLB '65 and Margaret Logan Hillhouse A.B. '66 are all Cornell alumni, and his uncle, the late Albert Miller Hillhouse (Pi Kappa Alpha, Davidson College '24), was one of the original faculty members of the then Graduate School of Business and Public Administration, where he taught municipal finance for thirty years. Miller was also a faculty advisor to the Beta Theta chapter in the 1950s.
Robert Forness, BA '87, MBA '95 (Columbia). A resident of Chatham, New Jersey, Bob's career has spanned insurance, reinsurance and investment companies in start-up, growth and turnaround phases. He began his career at Prudential Financial, Inc. (formerly Prudential Insurance Company of America), working for eight years in corporate finance, financial operations, strategic planning and business development. In his last position for Prudential, Bob was managing director of Prudential's no-load mutual fund company. Following Prudential, he worked in London for four years as Chief Operating Officer of Odyssey Re's London and Bermuda reinsurance companies, which underwrote property catastrophe, marine, casualty, excess & surplus lines, and alternative risk transfer business. More recently, Bob was the Chief Underwriting Officer of the Imagine Group, with responsibility for underwriting, actuarial, and claims functions for Imagine's offices at Lloyd's of London and in Bermuda, Barbados, Ireland, Denmark, and Australia. He served as an interim CEO of the Imagine Group and Managing Director of Imagine's Lloyd's of London business. He also led start-ups ranging from a B2B internet marketplace for insurance to a collectible car company. Bob now co-heads his own insurance agency business, alTreo llc, as a Managing Partner.
Andrew Glasner, BS '86 (EE). Andy is a resident of Trumansburg, currently serving as Director of Global Program Management at Borg-Warner in Ithaca. He began his career with Intel Corp and spent eighteen years in both product development and operations, also working as an expatriate in Tokyo, Japan. Andy is an active member of the youth soccer community in Tompkins County as a current board member and past president of TC United Soccer club. He retains his coaching license and is active with multiple age groups.
Thomas G. Helfrich, BS '64 (ILR), MBA '69, PhD cand. (Syracuse). Tom has served as CEO of several large construction industry trade associations, most recently as President of the Builders' Exchange of Rochester, where his responsibilities have included negotiating over nineteen labor agreements and serving as chair and trustee for eleven apprentice training programs and fourteen multi-employer employee benefit funds. He has received national recognition for innovative member services, safety and educational programs, and drug and alcohol testing. He chaired the Consumers Committee which developed the first Consumer Product Safety Commission standards for the US government, and coordinated New York State's response to President Nixon's construction industry wage controls. He managed projects and labor relations at Three Mile Island after its nuclear accident, and has served on numerous Cornell boards and committees as an undergraduate and alumnus. Tom taught full-time while division chair at a liberal arts college, and also taught part-time as a professor at Syracuse, SUNY, and four other colleges. One son is a Cornell alumnus, and another worked as a residential life director for five years, before recently moving to Columbia.
James A. Hodges, Jr., AB '60, MBA '62 (Chicago), CPA. A resident of Lake Forest, Illinois, Jim is CFO and Vice President of Administration of Gene Express, a private, late-stage entrepreneurial company focused on servicing the emerging genomic medicine market. The last thirty years of his career have been spent in finance, administration, and corporate development in medical and information technology companies. In addition, Jim has operated his own consulting practice where he worked with a variety of clients, many in the life sciences industry, including two turnarounds. He has been the CFO of a pre-IPO telecom company, as well as two NYSE-listed and one NASDAQ-listed company. He also served as corporate treasurer of Baxter International, Inc. He is married to Gail Taylor, AB '60.
Kenneth H. Hull, BS '64 (ALS), MS (Education) '02 (Elmira). A resident of Binghamton, Ken, now retired, served as Manager, Training and Development, for the United Health Services Federation, the largest hospital and health care delivery complex in the Southern Tier. Ken served as Pledge Master and was an Alpha Theta board member for 25-30 years, five years as its President.
Mark Ochs, BS '79 (ALS). A resident of Trumansburg, and a certified CNMP planner, Mark heads his own Ochs Consulting, servicing clients on environmental and agricultural matters, primarily in Yates and Tompkins counties.
William K. Page, BS (EE) and MS (Eng) '85, PhD (Rochester). A resident of Victor, NY, Bill is currently Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Rochester/Strong Medical Center and a member of its research team focused on Alzheimer's disease. His specific current interest is leading a NASA funded effort to understand how macaque monkeys' brains process visual and vestibular information to navigate in virtual environments, and analyze and document their neurological reactions to it. He also spent three years at GE in hardware design.
Nathan Rudgers, BS '82 (ALS, AgEcon). A resident of Pavillion, NY, Nathan was named senior vice president and director of business development of Farm Credit of Western New York (now Farm Credit East) in December 2005. Nathan is responsible for bringing resources to Farm Credit's clients who are planning or undergoing major business changes. He is a frequent speaker in state, national, and international forums on such topics as renewable energy, food safety, international trade, agriculture policy, and economic development. He also currently serves on the steering committee for 25 X 25, a group of industry leaders dedicated to fostering Agriculture and Forestry's role in US energy independence, and chairs their Carbon Work Group. Prior to joining Farm Credit, Nathan served as Commissioner of Agriculture and Markets for The State of New York. He was appointed Commissioner by Governor George E. Pataki in 1999. He began his tenure with the Department in 1995, serving as Deputy Commissioner, First Deputy Commissioner, and then Acting Commissioner. Nathan also served as President of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture in 2005. Prior to joining the Department, Nathan worked for several agri-business firms in the Northeast. Much of his experience in the private sector has involved the dairy industry and agricultural economics.
George Weiner, AB '64, MRP (Arch), PhD (Arch) '76. A resident of Rochester, George retired from Cleveland State University in 2007 as executive-in-residence at the Levin College of Urban Affairs and director of the University's Center for Health Equity. He had simultaneously held the William and Elizabeth Treuhaft Chair in Health Planning and Research at The Center for Community Solutions and an adjunct faculty position at the Institute for Public Health Sciences at the Case School of Medicine. George served earlier as vice president for policy analysis and research at the Center for Health Affairs and vice president of planning and institutional research for The MetroHealth System. At MetroHealth, he directed two USAID-funded community health partnerships in Slovakia and made numerous visits to Central and Eastern Europe.
George's research and teaching interests include health services research and planning, health disparities, and demography and epidemiology. Prior to retirement, he was principal investigator for a grant from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities at NIH. He has held faculty positions at the Maxwell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University and the J.J. Nance College of Business Administration at CSU. Before coming to Cleveland, he was an associate social scientist with the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica.
As a Cornell undergraduate, George served as pledge trainer, secretary, and president of Pi Kappa Alpha. As a graduate student, he was treasurer of the Alpha Theta Corporation. In Cleveland, he served as treasurer of the Cornell Club of Northeastern Ohio.
Charles K. Whitehead, BA magna cum laude '83, JD '86 (Columbia). Chuck resides in Ithaca, and is an Associate Professor of Law at Cornell Law School since fall 2009. At Cornell, he specializes in the law relating to corporations, financial markets, and strategic transactions. After clerking for the Hon. Ellsworth A. Van Graafeiland, US Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit), Chuck practiced in the United States, Europe, and Asia as outside counsel for, and general counsel of, several multinational financial institutions. Before joining Cornell, Chuck was on the faculty of the Boston University School of Law and was a research fellow at Columbia Law School, where he continues as a Visiting Scholar.
