Our Core Values: Kindness, Responsibility, Integrity,
Courage, Wonder, Patience
Harlem Link Board Members
Barney Adams
Partner and Chief Operating Officer, Arx Investment Management LP
As a founding partner and the COO of Arx Management, Mr. Adams has been responsible for setting up the firm and fund vehicles, managing the business aspects of the firm, serving as in-house counsel and compliance point person and heading investor relations function. Mr. Adams has served in executive roles in financial management and legal advisement companies for over twenty years, and as an attorney has been admitted to the bar in New York, Ohio and Massachusetts. In addition to Harlem Link, he currently serves on the board of two theatre companies and the Professional Advisors Committee of the New York City Ballet.
Jonathan Barrett
Managing Director, LS Power Equity Advisors, LLC
Jonathan Barrett is Managing Director of Luminus Management, a private equity and hedge fund management company focused on the power sector. Prior to joining Luminus, Mr. Barrett was a Director in Salomon Smith Barney's Merger and Acquisition Group. During his six years at Salomon, Mr. Barrett executed in excess of 40 transactions covering numerous industries and transaction structures, including: mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, sales and corporate restructurings. Prior to emigrating to the United States, Mr. Barrett graduated with honors in Accounting from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa and completed two years with Price Waterhouse. Before joining Salomon Smith Barney, he spent four years at NYC based investment management firm, J Epstein & Co. (Wexner Investment Company) and Ossa Properties, an affiliated NYC real estate investment company.
David Brown
Associate, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP
David W. Brown is an associate in the Litigation Department at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. His practice focuses primarily on general commercial and securities litigations and arbitrations, as well as on the defense of white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement matters. He has also worked on appellate constitutional matters. Mr. Brown clerked for the Honorable Judith W. Rogers of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2000-2001. He received his J.D., cum laude, in 2000 from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor of the Harvard Law Review. He received his A.B., magna cum laude, in 1997 from Harvard College, where he concentrated in Social Studies.
Steven Evangelista
Co-Director for Operations
Mr. Evangelista began working in public education in 1998, when he became a Teach For America Corps Member. He has taught as a lead teacher in Harlem in the third through fifth grades, and served in several leadership roles, including School Leadership Team service and writing grants to begin and extend community gardens at two school sites. He has also served as a consultant to SchoolStart, a national non-profit that provides organizational and planning support to educators, families and communities interested in launching charter schools. Mr. Evangelista received a BA from Georgetown University and an MS.Ed. from Bank Street College of Education where he completed an independent study on a rationale for an urban charter school. In 2004, he completed Building Excellent Schools, a national fellowship dedicated to training founders of new charter schools.
Rachel Field
Assistant Vice President of Office of Diversity and Inclusion, AXA Equitable
Rachel Field is the Assistant Vice President of AXA Equitable's Office of Diversity and Inclusion, reporting to the Chief Diversity Officer. She is responsible for developing AXA Equitable's diversity strategy and related communications, advising the corporate diversity counsel reporting to the CEO, and analyzing internal diversity survey and focus group results and company-wide diversity expenditures. Rachel co-facilitates and helped develop AXA Equitable's diversity training. Additionally, she manages the Diversity Endeavors Group – an internal forum of individuals from varied business areas, working on diversity-related initiatives. Prior to joining AXA Equitable, she spent 10 years as a social worker in New York City, working for Edwin Gould Academy, Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, and City Volunteer Corps. Her areas of social work included youth aging out of foster care, employment training and grant writing for after-school, mentoring and financial literacy programs. Ms. Field earned a Masters degree in Social Work from New York University and a BA in Psychology from SUNY Binghamton.
Karen C. Hyland
After working on Wall Street for a while, K.C. Hyland began her teaching career at The Buckley School, an all boys K-9 private day school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. She taught Math, English and Social Studies to primarily 5th and 6th graders. During her 12 years of employment at Buckley, she served as the Director of Admissions for four years. Later, she moved on to teaching English and Writing at The Spence School, an all girls K-12 private day school, and then to St. Hilda’s & St. Hugh’s, a Co-ed nursery through 8th grade private day school. Ms. Hyland is now retired, bringing over 35 years of teaching experience and educational service to Harlem Link’s Board of Trustees and Education Committee.
Joshua Lamstein
Josh Lamstein is a Director at GF Capital Management, a private equity firm focused on investments in the media and consumer products sectors, and he currently sits on the Board of Directors of Trade Service Company. Prior to this position, Mr. Lamstein worked for Mousse Partners, a family investment office, where he was a Director responsible for the Private Equity portfolio. In this capacity he was responsible for overseeing an extensive group of buyout, venture capital, real estate, distressed, and energy limited partnerships. Additionally he was responsible for the firm’s direct investment program.
Before his position at Mousse Partners, Mr. Lamstein was a Partner at LMS Capital, the US investment arm of London Merchant Securities. During his tenure, Mr. Lamstein invested in software, entertainment, business information and oilfield services companies and served on their Board. Earlier in his career, Lamstein worked at Apollo Advisors where he evaluated transactions and invested in companies in western and emerging Europe. Industries covered include communications, manufacturing, media and entertainment.
Mr. Lamstein began his career in finance at Lehman Brothers as an Associate in the Leveraged Finance and Mergers and Acquisitions groups. Working in both New York and London, he led transactions in high yield, equity and advisory. He holds a B.A. from Colgate University in Economics and Asian studies (honors) and an M.B.A. from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.
John Reddick
Founding Board Member
John served as a founding board member during the charter application process and transitioned to being a staff member, maintaining his position on the board in a nonvoting capacity. Prior to joining the staff, John served as Vice-Chair of the board. John taught for the Chinatown Planning Council for 21 years and currently also serves as a consultant for the Trust for Public Land and the New York City Housing Authority. He is also a black belt who teaches at the Hoteikan Dojo in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
Margaret Ryan
Co-Director for Instruction
Ms. Ryan began her career in public education in 1997, when she relocated to New York City as a Teach For America Corps Member in the South Bronx. Over the course of her six years as a lead teacher, Ms. Ryan has been an English Language Arts middle school teacher and a fifth and third grade classroom teacher, with three years of her tenure in an elementary school in Central Harlem. Ms. Ryan's leadership roles include co-chairing the School Leadership Team, acting as a cooperating teacher to student teachers from Bank Street College of Education, and being a selector for the New York City Teaching Fellows. Ms. Ryan received a BA from Marist College and an MS.Ed. from Bank Street College of Education. In 2004, she completed Building Excellent Schools, a national fellowship dedicated to training founders of new charter schools.
Deirdre Simon
Deirdre Simon joined Harlem Link’s Board of Directors in January 2008, coming from a background of professional work in education, art and finance. Ms. Simon spent the first 10 years of her professional life working in public schools throughout New York City teaching hands-on learning techniques using art. She holds a Masters degree in Fine Art from Claremont Graduate School, along with a Masters in Business Administration from Columbia University. Today, she is a Vice President at Wilfred Aubrey, a hedge fund focused on high yield and distressed investments and serves on Harlem Link’s Education Committee.