Board

Joe Jean isn’t only an insurance litigator and advisor who represents policyholders in claims against their insurance companies; he is a creative business adviser who builds long-term relationships that help him develop ideas to not only help clients win arguments, but avoid them in the first place.

Mr. Jean provides real-world advice, including the pros and cons of actions he recommends. He focuses on property and business interruption insurance for commercial property owners in the education, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, mining, retail, and multifamily housing industries and has represented clients on some of the nation’s largest and most important catastrophic property losses, including the attacks on the World Trade Center and natural disasters such as Superstorm Sandy, hurricanes, tornados, floods and earthquakes. Over the past 15 years, Mr. Jean has helped policyholders recover more than $5 billion in damages.

Mr. Jean also advises clients on insurance coverage for matters involving general and product liability, directors’ and officers’ liability, employment liability, toxic tort liability and governmental investigations. He has practiced in federal and state courts and has represented clients in domestic and international insurance and reinsurance arbitrations and mediations.

An avid cyclist outside the office, Mr. Jean’s pro bono work includes acting as national counsel for a nonprofit professional association and representing indigent clients before state and federal courts, including the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Jean is also actively involved in representing Superstorm Sandy victims against their insurance companies.

Gary Gordon’s career was on Wall Street, where he was primarily a stock analyst covering the housing, mortgage, and consumer finance industries. He also served as a U.S. investment strategist and as a portfolio manager. The bulk of his work career was at PaineWebber and UBS (1988 to 2005). He is now retired.

Mr. Gordon does volunteer teaching at a junior high school and at Taconic Women’s Correctional Facility. He also presents financial literacy seminars to college and high school students. He is on the Board of Hudson Link and on operating committees at UJA and the Neuberger Museum.

Mr. Gordon is married with two young adult children. He has degrees from Colgate University (BA ’74, philosophy) and The Wharton School (MBA ’77, finance).

Brian Fischer is a recently retired Commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision after 44 years of dedicated service. Commissioner Fischer led the nation’s fourth-largest state correctional system with 57,069 people incarcerated in 67 facilities and is responsible for the community supervision of 37,917 parolees.

He has served on the Board of Directors at Hudson Link since 2007. His knowledge, experience and dedication to enhancing efficacy and improving programs within New York’s prison system have been integral to Hudson Link’s success, and consequently, to the success of our graduates.

In addition to college programs, Mr. Fischer has championed services for incarcerated people with serious mental health needs, and implemented several non-traditional programs, including some of which have become models for other prisons: transitional re-entry programs, theater, in addition to domestic violence and parenting skills for men. He knows the value of these programs in fostering the very best individual human potential while benefitting, ultimately, the whole of society.

“It is a win-win situation,” he says. “And Hudson Link enables that potential, the key being its willingness to look at what can be, rather than what was, for those who seek our help.”

Mr. Fischer also sits on the board of Puppies Behind Bars, a program that allows currently incarcerated people to raise puppies that are then trained to be Seeing Eye dogs and, most recently, as special service dogs for disabled veterans.

He has been an adjunct professor at both Pace University and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Commissioner Fischer has received recognition by a number of organizations, most recently:
The New York State Bar Association Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Field of Corrections, 2011
The Public Service Award from the Community College Fellowship, City University of New York, 2009.
Warden of the Year Award from the North American Association of Wardens and Superintendents for his work at Sing Sing in 2006.

Mr. Fischer was born in Brooklyn and has lived most of his life in Rockland County. He is married and has two grown sons. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, a Master’s Degree in Guidance and Counseling, and a Master’s Degree in Professional Studies.

Ellen R. Dulberger was introduced to HL through Catch-a-fire, an organization that matches not-for-profits with professionals whose expertise is needed for a specific project. She helped Hudson Link develop and refine our vision and mission statement. Ellen also assisted Hudson Link with getting support from strategy consultants, and a grant from IBM. She shares the vision and believes that Hudson Link provides a very valuable service to individuals and society. She joined the Board in early 2014.

Ms. Dulberger is Managing Partner of Ellen Dulberger Enterprises, LLC, a consulting practice focused on economics, strategy and risk management, particularly applied to challenges in which information technology is a factor.

Prior to starting her consulting company, Ellen had responsibility for designing and implementing IBM’s Enterprise Risk Management program.

Ms. Dulberger’s earlier experience includes strategy development roles which identified non-traditional opportunities and approaches to pursuing them. One example evolved into Cloud Computing.

The first half of Ms. Dulberger’s career was dedicated to economic analysis including innovative work on price measurement that improved demand forecasts for the company’s products, and was adopted by the U.S. Department of Commerce to improve measures of investment in the U.S.

Ms. Dulberger earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Queens College, CUNY (1974) and then a Ph.D in Economics (1986) from The Graduate Center, CUNY with fields of specialty in human resource economics and international trade.

Being raised in an impoverished neighborhood in the Bronx, my mother worked day and night to provide me with a quality education and the means for me to achieve more out of life. Seeing friends and others in the community committing crimes, going to jail and/or dying, I quickly disavowed myself of the notion that I was better or somehow different than them, other than the fact that I was given such an opportunity to learn, to dream, to hope and to actually believe that I could achieve a better life for myself. That is the transformative power of education. Hudson Link provides the opportunity for graduates to embrace the world of opportunities that can only be realized through education.

Mr. Dobson serves as Vice President, Associate General Counsel and Assistant Secretary at The Interpublic Group of Companies, a global advertising and marketing services company. His responsibilities include providing legal counsel to the corporation on matters of corporate governance, securities regulation, public company disclosure, corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions.

Mr. Dobson resides in Manhattan and his interests include golf, tennis, bicycling, hiking and photography. He is a contributor to various causes as well as a participant in a number of annual fundraising endeavors, including the Covenant House Sleep Out, Avon 39 Walk to End Breast Cancer and Cycle for Survival.

Christian French helps to guide the vision and strategic direction of the organization and ensure that the board of directors and its members fulfill their governance responsibilities.

Mr. French joined the Hudson Link family in 2004 after attending their annual Spring Benefit Dinner at the Supper Club and meeting several Hudson Link alumni who, through the help of Hudson Link, transformed their lives.

Mr. French has stated that his hope is that “the incredible success we have developed in Sing Sing, Fishkill and Sullivan Correctional Facilities can be spread to all qualified candidates in the prisons throughout the state and country. It takes hard work, self-examination and dedication to graduate with a degree from our program and if there are people who are willing to rehabilitate themselves through education, our society needs to find a way to support it.

Some would say that Hudson Link’s greatest accomplishment is its 0% recidivism rate, but I think that really undervalues the impact Hudson Link has on individuals and their surrounding community. As a result of our program, our graduates self esteem changes – they develop a belief in their ability to lead by example and they develop a greater understanding of their role in society, the impact of their actions and their responsibility to leave this world a better place.”

Mr. French earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and is Chief Operating Officer of WRNN-TV Associates, owner of the Regional News Network (RNN), a local, independent television station in New York. He has spent the last ten years establishing RNN as a media competitor in the New York market, growing its distribution from 300,000 cable homes to now over 5 million homes including all five boroughs of New York City. In September of 2005, he completed construction of RNN’s 5th facility, a brand new all-digital production center and studios in Rye Brook, NY.

Mr. French is a board member of the Spectrum Clearing alliance and the Broadcasters Digital Cooperative; is a Rockefeller Fellow for the Partnership of New York City and volunteers with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. He and his lovely wife Sharon live in Westchester with their three children: Connor, Madison and Maximus.