Brooklyn's Progress
August/September 2007

BANKING/FINANCE:

Sovereign Bank: Sovereign Bank announced that Mary Gelormino has joined Sovereign Bank as Senior Vice President/Regional Executive with responsibility for business development in the metropolitan New York area.
Prior to joining Sovereign, Ms. Gelormino was a Senior Vice President and Client Relations Manager for Bank of America working with Middle Market firms in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Previously, she was at Fleet Bank and its predecessors NatWest and NBNA for 25 years, holding positions of increasing responsibility in commercial and retail banking.

Mary Gelormino is involved in many professional and civic activities. She serves as an educator and mentor in marketing, management and banking at New York University and Long Island University and is a member of the school’s Business Advisory Board. Ms. Gelormino has been honored for community service to the Boy Scouts of America, Brooklyn Psychiatric, Inc., Columbia University Teachers Association and the Borough President of Brooklyn.

A resident of Brooklyn, Ms. Gelormino received her BA and MBA degrees from New York University. She has professional certificates from the Stonier Graduate School of Banking, American Institute of Banking and the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. She also is a graduate of the Lay Leadership Program of the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens.

COMMUNICATIONS/TECHNOLOGY:

TSS Software: TSS Software Corporation, the nation's largest independent provider of settlement services software, announced the appointment of Frank Roberts to its corporate management team as Vice President, Support Operations. In this role, Mr. Roberts will help to shape strategic direction through development and implementation of support operations that ensure customer satisfaction and improve response efficiency. Responsible to improve and maintain a support system that includes telecom, e-mail, and web-related functionality, Mr. Roberts' year-end goals include opening up a self-service Web portal for customers to view FAQs and technical support articles and implementing Live Chat for customer support. Mr. Roberts joined TSS in 2003 with over 20 years of information technology experience. Previously the company's Director of Operations, Mr. Roberts will continue to oversee the company's support operations, providing leadership to the TSS customer support teams.

EDUCATION:

Pratt Institute: Pratt Institute has named Ira Livingston chairperson of the Department of English and Humanities in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Livingston is currently an associate professor of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies and of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he also serves as director of the Cultural Studies Program, director of Graduate Studies for Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies, and as a faculty member in the Women's Studies Program. He has taught courses in literary and cultural theory, film, race, gender, and sexual diversity, and science at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Livingston's books include Between Science and Literature: An Introduction to Autopoetics (University of Illinois Press, 2005) and Arrow of Chaos: Romanticism and Postmodernity (University of Minnesota Press, 1997). He co-edited the collection, Posthuman Bodies (Indiana University Press, 1995) and the forthcoming collection, The Poetry and Cultural Studies Reader (University of Illinois Press). Livingston holds a doctorate and a master of arts in English from Stanford University, as well as a bachelor of arts in English from Macalester College. He is a resident of Brooklyn, New York.

Nazareth Regional High School: Timothy D. King, senior partner for Massey Knakal Realty Services, has been named chairman of the board of Brooklyn’s Nazareth Regional High School. Nazareth, a co-educational Catholic high school with 600 students, is located in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Mr. King said that his father, who immigrated from Northern Ireland, and his mother, whose mother immigrated from the Republic of Ireland, struggled to put all of their children through Catholic schools. In addition to his volunteer work for Nazareth Regional High School, Mr. King is a member of the board of directors of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra and Montague Street BID; Member of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, Urban Land Institute, International Council of Shopping Centers, Community Mayors of New York, and Irish-American Building Society; and past president of the Flatbush-Nostrand Chamber of Commerce. In 2005, Mr. King was named Massey Knakal’s first Chief Operating Officer with the responsibility of implementing various sales initiatives in the offices outside Brooklyn to facilitate the firm’s growth. In 2007, after serving in management and helping expand the business, he returned to his first love and what he enjoys most, working directly with clients as senior partner leasing commercial properties.
 
PUBLIC/NON-PROFIT:

New York City Economic Development Corporation: NYCEDC President Robert C. Lieber announced that Madelyn Wils has joined NYCEDC as an Executive Vice President, leading its Development and Planning division. Among Ms. Wils’ responsibilities in the new role will be to oversee the coordination and implementation of NYCEDC’s area-wide revitalization plans throughout the five boroughs. Wils joins NYCEDC from the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI), where she served as President from 2004 through 2006. Ms. Wils will oversee NYCEDC’s Development and Planning division, comprised of those two departments. NYCEDC’s Development department coordinates NYCEDC's master planning and related interdisciplinary initiatives that strengthen the city's central business districts and increase public access to the waterfront. The Planning department provides in-house consultation and project management on a wide range of land use planning topics such as environmental review, traffic, zoning, urban renewal, contaminated site cleanup and regulated wetlands.