Board of directors
Chair
Barbara Paxton
Barbara Paxton is the Director of BoardStrong. BoardStrong provides nonprofits access to diverse trained board candidates with a passion to serve, while helping boards make best use of the talent around the table and preparing new board members to serve as effectively as possible. She has over 20 years of experience working with nonprofits, including as Director of Development of The Child Center and Executive Director of Children of Bellevue. She also serves on the Community Advisory Board of the Henry J. Carter Center.
treasurer
Max Thompson, Managing Director & Group Head, Healthcare Investment Banking, Synovus
Max is an investment banker focused on emerging growth, middle market, and large healthcare services companies across the US. He is the founder and currently the Group Head of the Healthcare Services Investment Banking team at Synovus, an American financial services company with over $55 billion in assets. Previously, he worked at Bank of America's Global Healthcare Investment Banking Group in New York and London and J.P. Morgan in New York. Max is an alum of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (Undergrad), the Stanford Graduate School of Business (Executive Education), and the Horace Mann School in New York.
Secretary
Sara Stone, Freelance Retail Design Projects
Sara Stone is an artist and designer. She has been a long standing community volunteer and leader, with experience in communications, program development and fundraising. Her dedication includes working with The New York Junior League (NYJL), MOMA, The Museum of Art & Design, Lacoste School of the Arts in France, St. Luke’s School, Catskill Mountains Junior Golf, and a fire department auxiliary in the Catskills. At the NYJL, where Sara has volunteered for over 20 years, she chaired and co-chaired multiple committees and served on the board as a manager and vice president. It was her involvement with NYJL that led Sara to CCHP, when she was asked to chair a committee to work with our Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC). Several years later, Sara herself joined ECDC with her son. She is also a director of The Stone Family Foundation.
director
Ben Kusmin
Ben is an attorney, practicing commercial litigation at Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf LLP in New York City. Earlier in his legal career, Ben gained substantial experience representing homeless families and criminal defendants in pro bono matters. Prior to becoming an attorney, Ben worked as a mechanical engineer and lived in Istanbul, Turkey for a number of years. Ben graduated from Johns Hopkins University and Boston University School of Law.
director
Donna Lazarus, Esq, Special Counsel, Associate Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP
Donna Lazarus is an attorney practicing in the areas of employment law and education law. She is a Special Counsel at Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP where she has worked for over a decade. She handles employment discrimination , harassment, and employment-related policies for corporate and other clients. She also works with a broad range of educational institutions, specializing in independent schools, advising them on a variety of legal matters including board liability, student discipline, learning and other disabilities, admissions, contract, and litigation issues. Donna is a graduate of Binghamton University and New York University School of Law.
director
Will George, Senior Director, Strategy NYU Langone Health
Will is a senior director at NYU Langone Health focusing on enterprise strategic planning and growth, leveraging prior experience as a management consultant advising healthcare clients across the country. Will holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis.
director
Ruth Colp-Haber, Founder / Wharton Property Advisors
Over the last 30 years, Ruth Colp-Haber has completed roughly 500 NYC office leases for businesses, schools, and nonprofits. Her company Wharton Property Advisors (WPA) is a real estate consultancy that represents tenants leasing office space in New York. Ruth is a Counselor of Real Estate and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. WPA is also a partner in an exclusive global network of real estate agents representing tenants in approximately 75 cities in the United States and worldwide.
In a real estate market where landlords charged eye-popping rents until the pandemic hit, Ruth has a long history of obtaining favorable leases for her clients. Ruth has been a member of the Real Estate Board of New York since 1989 and currently serves on its Economic Policy, Plaza District, Grand Central, and Lower Manhattan Committees. She is a Board Member of the Center for Comprehensive Health Practice and St. Mary’s Healthcare System for Children.
Before starting her own woman-owned business as a real estate entrepreneur, Ruth was a Mortgage Trader at Merrill Lynch.
Ruth earned her MBA at The Wharton School. She also received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, graduating Magna cum Laude. Ruth is a fourth-generation native New Yorker and attended the Fieldston School.
director
Angela Tu
Angela Tu is an internal medicine physician with a focus on immigrant and community health. She trained at NYU/Bellevue and worked at Gouverneur Hospital from which she retired to raise her three boys. Angela, with her boys, has been a part of ECDC for 18 years.
Angela graduated from State University of New York / Health Science Center at Stony Brook in 2001. She has been a Director on the Board of CCHP since 2012.
director
Chirag Choksey
Chirag Choksey is currently Head of Trading and Data Analytics at Forest Avenue Capital. Prior to joining Forest Avenue Capital, Chirag was a Senior Quantitative Analyst at Zimmer Partners. From 2014 to 2019, Chirag served as a Vice President at Blackstone, where he was responsible for trading, investment evaluation, portfolio analytics, and risk management for BAAM's Special Situations Investing Group. Chirag started his career as a defense contractor at Artistech, working with Army Research Labs in robotics and visualization. Chirag holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from Cornell University, and a Master of Business Administration from NYU Stern.
director
Leslie Stone, Family Medicine Physician Neighborhood Clinic on Capitol Mall
Dr. Stone is a graduate of the UAMS College of Medicine. In the summer of 2000, he worked as a research assistant for a field study of child malnutrition in Honduras. In 2004, he worked with Cuban physicians in Havana and Santa Clara, Cuba. Dr. Stone worked as a physician in Arkansas for several years before moving to work in a community health center serving East Harlem, New York in 2014. While there, he participated in team-based care for his patients.
Graduate School State University of New York at Buffalo
Medical School University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences
Undergraduate Education University of Central Arkansas
DIRECTOR
Andre Nelson, MPA
Andre Nelson, MPA is a self-proclaimed ‘Analytical Advocate.’ With an extensive background in analytics, Andre has worked in both financial services and the healthcare/hospital sectors. Currently Andre works as a manager at a healthcare-analytics tech company based in Santa Rosa, California. Although analytics and data are Andre’s profession, his true passion is in understanding and addressing healthcare disparities: specifically reducing maternal mortality rates in BIPOC women and birthing people.
Andre is the Founder and CEO of Obsidian Perinatal Wellness (OPWell), which is a company centered around educating and supporting BIPOC non-birthing partners. The mission of his company is to ensure non-birthing partners are informed and knowledgeable around the potential risks that BIPOC birthing people face throughout their pregnancy. The ultimate goals are to empower these non-birthing partners to advocate and escalate potential issues should they arise, and to also ensure active participation and focused attention on their partners’ wellness up to one year post partum.
Andre holds a bachelor’s degree from Drexel University in International Business and Marketing, and also has a master’s degree in Public Administration with a focus on Healthcare Administration from Pace University. He is a father of two to Kayden (3 years old) and Amani (10 months old), and recently celebrated his 10-year wedding anniversary with his wife Jacqueline. In his spare time, he enjoys practicing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and spending time with family and friends.
director emeritus
Miki Kapoor, MBA, MPH, President & CEO, Verana Health
Miki Kapoor is an operational executive with twenty years of exclusively healthcare experience. He has a fifteen-year history of scaling businesses through building high-performing management teams, knowing the realities of healthcare intimately, and creating a culture of results. He is currently President & CEO of Verana Health, the developer of a cutting-edge platform for life science innovation that utilizes regulatory-grade specialty data sets. Mr. Kapoor has also previously served as the Global Head of both Strategy and the Global Payer / Provider Division at IMS Health, Senior Expert for McKinsey & Company, the Global Head of Health Systems at the Clinton Foundation, and a senior investment banker in the healthcare industry. He has an MBA and MPH from Yale University, is a Fulbright Fellow, and serves on the boards of several healthcare organizations.