Blacksmith Board of Directors
Richard Fuller
President, Blacksmith Insitute
Richard Fuller began working on environmental issues in Australia in the early 1980's. After a stint in the rainforests of Brazil setting up extractive reserves under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program, and a successful career establishing a for-profit environmental consulting firm in NY, Richard founded the Blacksmith Institute in 1999. He believes that on a global scale, pollution is still one of the most serious problems the earth faces, and developing countries bear the brunt of it. Up until now very little support has been given to local institutions to solve these problems — a gap Blacksmith aims now to fill. He believes that if we solve these problems, the world will be a healthy and safe place for all of us and all of our children. And because these problems are individually solvable, and because they are finite in number, fixing all these issues is doable. So let's do it!
Joshua Ginsberg
Vice President, Conservation Operations, Wildlife Conservation Society
Joshua Ginsberg was born and raised in New York. As Director of Asia Programs at the Wildlife Conservation Society he oversees 100 projects in 16 countries. He received a B.Sc. from Yale, and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton. Dr. Ginsberg spent 17 years as a field biologist/conservationist working in Asia and Africa on a variety of wildlife issues. He has held faculty positions at Oxford University, University College London, is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, and is the author of over 40 reviewed papers and three books on wildlife conservation, ecology and evolution.
Joshua Mailman
President, Sirius Business Corporation
Joshua Mailman is one of the founding trustees of the Rausing Trust. He is also a trustee of the Mailman Foundation, in New York and an advisor to the Pema Fund, in San Francisco. He has played an instrumental role in the founding of numerous organizations focused on business and social responsibility, including Social Venture Network (1987), Business for Social Responsibility (1992) and Social Venture Network Europe(1993). He is also the founder of the Threshold Foundation (1981) and a cofounder of the Network for Social Change U.K. (1983). He currently serves on the boards of Afropop Worldwide, Business for Social Responsibility, Fund for Global Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Sierra Madre Alliance and Witness. He is also a co-founder of Grameen Telecom, the largest cellular operator in Bangladesh and the only phone company in the world one-third owned by a bank that represents the interests of the poor. (The above information was taken from the Sigrid Rausing Trust website).
Ronald H. Reede
Managing Director, Equity Sales, Lazard Capital Markets
Ron Reede is a managing director at Lazard Capital Markets in the equity group. Originally from New York, he studied at Drew University and the Australian School of Management in Sydney, before receiving his MBA from New York University. Mr. Reede has been a member of the Board of Directors since 2003.
Sheldon Kasowitz
Managing Partner, Indus Capital Partners
Sheldon Kasowitz is a Managing Partner and co-Founder of Indus Capital Partners, a $5bn alternative asset manager focused on the Asia Pacific region. Prior to forming Indus in 2000, Sheldon was a partner at Soros Fund Management and has also worked at Jardine Fleming in Asia and Goldman Sachs in New York. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Connecticut as well as an MBA from Columbia University, and sits on the boards of the Blacksmith Institute and The University of Connecticut Foundation. He and his wife, Samantha’s, charitable interests focus on children, the environment and education.
Siddhartha Sandilya
Director, Deutsche Bank
Sid Sandilya is a portfolio manager in the Saba Principal Strategies proprietary investment department of the Global Markets division of Deutsche Bank in New York. Prior to joining Deutsche Bank, Mr. Sandilya was a Vice President in the Principal Strategies / Risk Arbitrage proprietary investment department of Goldman, Sachs & Co. Mr. Sandilya began his career in the investment banking division of Salomon Brothers and also spent several years in the private equity investment business at JPMorgan Partners and Nassau Capital in Princeton.
Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc
Professor and Chairman, Department of Community & Preventive Medicine
Professor of Pediatrics
Director, Children's Environmental Health Center
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Philip Landrigan is a pediatrician, epidemiologist, and international leader in public health and preventive medicine. After graduating from Harvard Medical School and completing his residency in pediatrics at Boston Children.s Hospital, Dr. Landrigan served for 15 years as an epidemic intelligence service officer and medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. He has been a member of the faculty of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine since 1985 and chairman of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine since 1990. He has been a leader in developing the National Children.s Study, the largest study of children.s health and the environment ever launched in the United States.
Dr. Landrigan is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine and previously was editor of Environmental Research. He chaired committees at the National Academy of Sciences that produced the reports Environmental Neurotoxicology and Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children. The report that he directed on pesticides and children's health was instrumental in securing passage of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the major federal pesticide law in the United States. From 1995 to 1997, Dr. Landrigan served on the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veteran.s Illnesses. In 1997 - 1998, Dr. Landrigan served as senior advisor on Children.s Health to the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and he was instrumental in helping to establish a new Office of Children.s Health Protection at the EPA.
