Purchase College Foundation Names New Board Members

The Purchase College Foundation, which supports the students and faculty of Purchase College, SUNY, is pleased to announce new board members, effective immediately.

Vice President of Institutional Advancement and Executive Director of the Purchase College Foundation and Charitable Entities, Donna Frithsen, said, “I believe these new board members will help us further our mission to provide an inspiring education to all our students. While our new board members hail from different industries and bring different experiences, interests, and talents, what they have in common is their deep commitment to our students’ success. We’re grateful for their time and enthusiasm as we work together for the future of Purchase College.”

About the Purchase College Foundation

The Purchase College Foundation, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization in the State of New York, was established to promote literature, history, visual and performing arts, science and other departments of education at Purchase College, SUNY. Today, the Foundation focuses its priorities on Student Success, including scholarships and the unique student experiences that can be found only at Purchase; the institution’s faculty; student activities, research and programs supported by The Purchase Fund; and the world-renowned Neuberger Museum of Art and The Performing Arts Center.

About the Newly Appointed Board Members

Clifford H. Aronson serves as the North American leader of Skadden’s Antitrust/Competition Group. He focuses his practice on advising clients in antitrust matters relating to mergers and acquisitions.

Mr. Aronson has been involved in numerous high-profile transactions and strategic alliances across multiple industries, including entertainment, consumer products, health care, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, retail and technology. He also has worked on numerous significant criminal and civil antitrust investigations (and resulting civil lawsuits) in various industries, including publishing, auction houses and cement. Mr. Aronson, who is listed in the top tier in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, also has been included repeatedly in Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business, The Best Lawyers in America, Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America, The Legal 500 and Who’s Who Legal: Competition. Law360 selected Mr. Aronson as one of its Competition MVPs in 2012.

In addition to transactional matters, Mr. Aronson advises clients in other areas of antitrust and competition, including litigation and investigations. He also has assisted clients in planning legal strategies to address industry threats and opportunities. He represented CEMEX S.A. de C.V. in numerous acquisitions as well as in connection with an antitrust price-fixing lawsuit brought by buyers of cement products in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, which was in large part dismissed by the court.

Mr. Aronson represented HarperCollins, a subsidiary of News Corporation, in an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and various state attorneys general in connection with the pricing of e-books, as well as in private class action litigation brought against various publishers and Apple. He also successfully defended a high-tech company in a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into alleged hiring practices in the high-tech industry.

Additionally, Mr. Aronson represents clients before federal and state antitrust agencies and grand juries. For example, he represented Christie’s Inc. in connection with the U.S. Department of Justice’s auction house investigation and Christie’s successful amnesty application, as well as in connection with certain private class actions. He also advised Chicago Bridge & Iron in its appeal from a decision and order of the Federal Trade Commission requiring the divestiture of certain assets.

Mr. Aronson is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and previously has been an instructor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is a regular speaker on mergers and acquisitions at Wharton’s Executive Education Program. He also serves on the board of Westchester Land Trust and previously was vice chair of the Mergers and Acquisitions Committee of the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association.

Mr. Aronson earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center.

He and his wife, Amy Benenson Aronson, live in Rye, New York. They have three children.

Vicki Gillespie, BEc, FAICD, FAIM is currently SVP and Global Process Executive for PepsiCo. She has extensive international corporate and operating experience spanning the IT&T, Entertainment and FMCG industries.

Ms. Gillespie joined PepsiCo in 2005 and since that time has held multiple executive leadership positions within its international operations, North America and Corporate units, including CFO Australia and New Zealand Business Unit, VP SAP & Business Transformation for Asia, Middle East, Africa, VP Planning & New Business Development, SVP & CFO Middle East Africa and SVP Finance, North America Beverages.

Prior to joining PepsiCo, Ms. Gillespie was the Finance and Systems Director at the Sydney Opera House responsible for the Finance, IT, Commercial Operations, Legal functions and the Secretariat to the Board. She was a member of the Building Committee. Earlier in her career, Ms. Gillespie gained over 15 years of international experience in the IT&T industry at Telstra, Gateway and Unisys.

Ms. Gillespie previously held board positions with NourishCo, a Tata PepsiCo joint venture headquartered in India, and Societe Moderne Libanaise pour le Commerce S.A.L. headquartered in Lebanon.

Richard A. Muskus, Jr. is President of Patriot Bank, N.A., a role he assumed in January 2017 after serving as the Bank’s Executive Vice President and Chief Lending Officer since February 2014. As EVP, he helped significantly expand the size and scope of the Bank’s commercial loan portfolio, introducing new products and initiatives, as well as overseeing the financing objectives of numerous vital community projects.

Throughout his Patriot banking career, Mr. Muskus has served in multiple capacities of expanding leadership, from Senior Credit Analyst to Commercial Lending Officer, responsible for developing new and successful commercial loan underwriting methods and credit standards.

A lifelong Greenwich resident, Mr. Muskus is well known in the community and is a highly respected second-generation banker with over 25 years of financial and lending experience. He began his career at State Street Bank in Boston and then expanded into analytical roles with Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan Investment Management. Mr. Muskus became SVP of Commercial Lending at The Greenwich Bank & Trust Company in 2000 before serving as President of that bank from 2010 to 2014.

He currently serves as Treasurer and Board member of the Town of Greenwich Human Services Foundation, is Director Emeritus and former President of the Board of Directors of the Transportation Association of Greenwich, a nonprofit organization which transports the elderly and disabled, serves as President of the Joseph Pilsudski Society of Greenwich, and he is the Fiduciary and Administrator of the Jane C. Bausman Scholarship Fund.

Mr. Muskus earned his BS in Accountancy from Bentley University in Waltham, MA. He lives in Riverside with his wife and three children.

Suellen McAvoy Peluso ’77 is an advancement professional with over 30 years of experience in higher education, academic medicine and non-profit management. She currently directs the office of corporate and foundation relations at the University of New Hampshire.

Previously, Ms. McAvoy Peluso served as vice president and associate vice president of development for the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and as vice president of development at the New England Aquarium. She has also held leadership roles for UCLA’s College of Letters and Science and the David Geffen School of Medicine, and at Colby-Sawyer College. Her experience spans building infrastructure for philanthropy programs and the design and success of several seminal development campaigns. Prior to her advancement work, Ms. McAvoy Peluso was a research assistant at the New York Blood Center and Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Ms. McAvoy Peluso volunteers as faculty for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), as committee member for the Network of Academic Corporate Relations Officers (NACRO), and as a steering committee member for a women’s roundtable for advancement leaders in Boston. She has served on the board of the Star Island Corporation and as liaison to its nominating, development, and outreach and engagement committees; and as planning committee member and chair of the International Affairs conference on Star Island. Additional volunteer commitments and appointments include Leadership NH, recognizing emerging leaders for state-wide civic engagement; SPARK, New Hampshire’s Early Childhood Advisory Council; Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains; and the St. Paul’s School Parents Fund, among others.

Ms. McAvoy Peluso earned a Bachelor of Arts in microbiology, with a minor in dance, from Purchase College and a Master of Science in public policy from NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She lives in Hopkinton, New Hampshire with her husband, Chris. They have one grown daughter.

John Ramberg (’76) retired as a senior engineering manager in the aerospace industry, having worked for Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed, and Hughes Aircraft. He was in the first freshman class at Purchase and graduated (B.A. ’76) with honors in physics (the first and only Purchase physics major) and went onto earn a M.A. in physics from Washington University in St. Louis.

Always an interdisciplinary sort, he also plays guitar and piano, studies cinematography, rides a Ducati, and SCUBA dives. He is interested in keeping alive the Purchase tradition of an interdisciplinary approach to education and life, countering the forces of specialization.

John currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife Karen.

Peter J. Wise is a founding partner of the firm of DelBello Donnellan Weingarten Wise & Wiederkehr, LLP, a member of its Executive Committee, and manager of its Land Use and Real Estate Development practice group. He represents major residential and commercial developers, real estate owners, retailers and other commercial enterprises, and not-for-profit companies, and over the last thirty-five years has been land use counsel for many of the most significant and transformative development projects in the region.

Mr. Wise has extensive experience in all aspects of real estate development including complex environmental review under the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act and National Environmental Policy Act, with an emphasis on large-scale urban renewal and redevelopment and public/private development partnerships, such as the recently approved Harrison Metro-North Station Transit Oriented Development, a partnership between the Town/Village of Harrison, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and AvalonBay Communities. He often represents clients in connection with industrial development agency and local development corporation projects, governmental economic development programs, and other government affairs, and as borrower’s counsel in taxable and tax-exempt bond financings.

Mr. Wise has been a Member of the American Institute of Certified [land use] Planners (AICP) since 1999, and is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Westchester Municipal Planning Federation. Mr. Wise also served as Deputy Corporation Counsel of the City of New Rochelle, New York, from 1991 to 1993. Mr. Wise is a graduate of Lehigh University (Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, December, 1979) and New York Law School (Juris Doctor, 1984). He lives in Bedford, New York, with his wife Deborah, an attorney, and has two adult daughters.

About Purchase College, SUNY

Purchase College, part of the State University of New York (SUNY) network of 64 universities and colleges, was founded in 1967 by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. His aspiration for Purchase was to create a dynamic campus that combined conservatory training in the visual and performing arts with programs in the liberal arts and sciences, in order to inspire an appreciation for both intellectual and artistic talents in all students. Today, Purchase College–SUNY is a community of students, faculty, and friends where open-minded engagement with the creative process leads to a lifetime of intellectual growth and professional opportunity. For more information about the College, visit www.purchase.edu.