Meet Our Board Members
Lucinda Warren
Chair
Former Pharma C-Suite Executive
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Nicole Furlonge
Board Member
Professor of Practice and Director, Klingenstein Center, Teachers College Columbia University
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Nicole is the author of Race Sounds: The Art of Listening in African American Literature, published by University of Iowa Press. Her book demonstrates listening as an interpretive, creative, and civic act that leads to deeper engagement with identity and racial difference. Currently, Nicole’s research examines the intersections between listening, cognitive neuroscience, cultural competency, school leadership and adult learning. Ultimately, she is interested in investigating ways to cultivate the habits of a listening mind.
Debu Purkayastha
Board Member
Managing Partner, 3rd Eye
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Debu spent almost six years at Google, spearheading its M&A and Investment efforts including landmark acquisitions and investments globally. He also led Google’s New Business Development efforts and was instrumental in launching several of Google’s iconic products globally spanning multiple key strategic focus areas. Debu was a founding member of Google “Campus”, the pre-eminent co-working space for startups in London, which led to the “Google for Entrepreneurs” program. Prior to Google, Debu headed Sabre’s Corporate Development/M&A team and was an Investment Banker with Salomon Smith Barney in Wall Street, Silicon Valley & London.
Debu sits on the Boards of Cambridge University/Cambridge Enterprise and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust (Revenues: ~$2.6B – largest Hospital Trust in the UK) amongst others and is the Chair of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation (500 years old foundation/charity with assets of ~$1.5B), in addition to Advisory Boards including PRS for Music, Unilever and London Business School (Curriculum Committee). Debu spends his personal time working with leading NGOs and governmental institutions in several politically sensitive and conflict zones (including Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Kashmir, etc.) focusing on economic development initiatives. Debu has an MBA from London Business School and is a qualified Chartered Accountant.
Cheryl Xu
Board Member
Healthcare/Technology Professional
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Cheryl has provided consultations to both the U.S. and Chinese governments on pharmaceutical policies. She directly contributed to the formulations of China’s healthcare reform policies published in 2009. She also works with charity projects related to public health, especially in areas of mental health (including dementia). She founded and serves as Director, Hope Center for National Health Studies in Beijing.
Cheryl’s past positions included Director of International Finance at Pharmacia (which merged with Pfizer) in New Jersey. She was later in charge of Pharmacia’s Business Development in Asia & Latin America. She co-led Pharmacia’s restructuring projects in Argentina and China during the previous financial crisis.
After 14 years in the U.S., Cheryl returned to Beijing as the first PhRMA Representative in China. She represented the industry to work with the Chinese government on key issues such as pricing, reimbursement and IPR.
Cheryl received her Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Peking University, and MBA in Finance from Washington University in St. Louis.
Liz Duffy
President
President, ISS
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Debra Kushma
Board Member
Senior Advisor, Phoenix Strategic Performance
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Aithan Shapira
Board Member
Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management • Founder, Made to Tilt • Consortium for Advancing Adult Learning & Development, McKinsey & Company
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Aithan serves on McKinsey’s think tank for Learning Innovation and has evolved his curricula intersecting transformation, skills development, culture and creativity for the future of work at MIT Sloan, Harvard iLab, Stanford d.school, and the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship. He has trained more than 12,000 leaders, 200 facilitators, given over 100 keynotes, and delivered customized leadership curricula for more than 30 Fortune 500 organizations in health, technology, finance, and energy.
Aithan developed his research on the creative process at the Royal College of Art & Design, lived in an Australian Aboriginal community for three years to study creativity in cultures of survival, and continues to be a visiting critic at arts institutions internationally. He exhibits his artwork in museums and galleries in New York, London, and Miami.
Katherine Yearwood Young
Board Member
Founder and Financial Advisor, Yearwood Young Advisors
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For the preceding decade of her career, Kate held various roles as an investment analyst evaluating hedge funds. During this time, Kate met with hundreds of managers active across various strategies, geographies, and financial markets. Most recently, she built hedge fund portfolios for high net worth individuals and families at Bessemer Trust, a multi-family office. Prior to that, she invested on behalf of various institutional clients (including pensions, endowments, and insurance companies, among others) at EnTrustPermal and New Holland Capital, two large alternative investment advisory firms. She was named a Hedge Fund Rising Star by Institutional Investor in 2017. She started her career as an analyst on the U.S. Interest Rate Structuring desk at Barclays Capital.
Kate holds a B.A. in Engineering Sciences with a concentration in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from Harvard University. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst® (CFA) Charterholder and a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional.
Tani Brown
Board Member
Principal, MUUS Climate Partners
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Tani started her career in marketing functions at Nike and Google, managing communications, operations, and client services for top big-box retail customers during the golden age of data-driven advertising technology and exchanges. In 2013, she was selected to complete a Fulbright grant in Vietnam with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs where she facilitated cultural exchange, English language instruction, and mutual understanding between the U.S. and Vietnam. She returned to the U.S. and spent 7 years building Jopwell, the leading venture-backed career advancement platform for diverse talent. At Jopwell, she held various senior leadership positions and focused on building talent attraction and recruitment strategies at top companies from the U.S. across finance, consulting, technology, healthcare, manufacturing, and CPG. Tani is an avid contributor to workforce diversity, equity, and inclusion issues and has been featured in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and USA Today.
Tani is chair of the jobs and employment committee for the Brooklyn NAACP and serves on the selection committee for the Princeton NY Prize in Race Relations. She graduated from Princeton where she captained the Ivy League championship women’s basketball team.
Marc Larkins
Board Member
Worldwide Vice President, Corporate Governance, and Corporate Secretary, Johnson & Johnson.
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Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson in 2015, Larkins served as the Acting State Comptroller for the State of New Jersey. Larkins was named to that independent post by Governor Chris Christie in December 2013. There, he led a staff responsible for conducting audits, investigations and performance reviews at all levels of New Jersey government. From 2010 to 2013, Larkins served as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the New Jersey Schools Development Authority (SDA), where he was responsible for the management and implementation of the state’s school construction program throughout New Jersey.
Larkins previously served in various capacities as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, where he held positions of Acting First Assistant United States Attorney, Executive Assistant United States Attorney and Acting Counsel to the United States Attorney. Throughout, Larkins was involved in the oversight and management of all operations of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and supervised a number of units including as Acting Chief of the Terrorism Unit and Chief of the Government Fraud Unit. He prosecuted public corruption cases in the Special Prosecutions Division and narcotics cases in the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Larkins began his legal career as a law clerk to the now retired Honorable James H. Coleman, Jr., the first African-American Justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court. He then served as a law clerk to the Honorable Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr., United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals, while Judge Greenaway sat on the District Court. In 1999, he was accepted into the Attorney General’s Honors Program at the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. He served as a trial attorney in the Criminal Division for a little over three years, specializing in domestic and international narcotics prosecutions. Larkins received his undergraduate degree in accounting from Seton Hall University and his Juris Doctorate from Seton Hall University School of Law.
Kevin Wong
Board Member
Partner, Co-Founder, PrepMaven, Princeton Tutoring
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He received a B.S in Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University. Kevin serves on the Board of the Newgrange School, which specializes in serving students with learning disabilities, and he is a governor and former co-chair of the Asian-American Alumni Association of Princeton. He also serves as a mentor and advisor to student-run startups through Princeton’s entrepreneurial hub (eHub).
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