After thirty-five years in finance, mostly at General Motors and GMAC, and culminating as executive vice president of GMAC’s North American Operations, Barbara Kiefer retired and pursed a M.A. in Historic Preservation at Savannah College of Art and Design. She graduated in 2013 and lives in West Hartford with her husband, Paul

Jay Malcynsky is the co-founder and managing partner of Gaffney, Bennett and Associates, Inc. Jay is also a practicing attorney licensed in Connecticut and Washington, D.C., and is the founder and managing partner of The Law Offices of Jay F. Malcynsky, P.C. In these capacities, Jay has distinguished himself as one of the most knowledgeable, highly respected, and capable professionals in the fields of government relations and political consulting, as well as administrative law. At the state Capitol, clients and legislators frequently call upon Jay’s skills in negotiating agreements, forging alliances, and coordinating crisis management. Under his leadership, Gaffney, Bennett and Associates has mounted a record of success unsurpassed in Connecticut.Mr. Malcynsky has been an active and longtime political strategist. Prior to establishing the firm, Jay managed U.S. Congressman Stewart B. McKinney’s political campaigns in 1980 and 1982. He also managed the re-election bids of U.S. Congresswoman Nancy Johnson and U.S. Senator Lowell P. Weicker, in 1984 and 1988, respectively. In 2000, Mr. Malcynsky served as campaign manager for Bush for President in Connecticut and was among the lead attorneys representing the Bush campaign during the Florida recount effort.He serves as President and a member of the Nutmeg State Games, as well as being a member of the board of directors of Connecticut Legal Services, and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston.After graduating from law school, Mr. Malcynsky served as a trial attorney in the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. He also served as an attorney for the U.S. House of Representatives.Jay and Jonie Malcynsky live in Chester, CT.

Dixon Mallory is the Director of Business Development for Greenwich Hospitality Group (GHG). Prior to GHG he was an associate with Newmark, a commercial real estate advisory firm, in New York City. Mr. Mallory earned his B.A. in Economics and Asian Studies from St. Lawrence University and his M.S in Real Estate Development from Columbia University. An avid golfer and squash player, Mr. Mallory is married to Sarah Saeli and resides in Greenwich, CT.

Justice Andrew J. McDonald (b. March 11, 1966) is a native of Stamford, CT. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Government from Cornell University. In 1991, he completed a Juris Doctor degree at the University of Connecticut Law School where he served as the Managing Editor of the Connecticut Journal of International Law. He also holds honorary Doctor of Law degrees from Quinnipiac University School of Law and the Western New England University School of Law.In 2013, Justice McDonald was nominated to be an associate justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, and he was confirmed by the Connecticut General Assembly later that month. In 2021, he was re-nominated Justice McDonald to the Supreme Court, and later that month he was again confirmed by the General Assembly. Justice McDonald is the senior associate justice of the Supreme Court.Prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court, Justice McDonald served as the General Counsel to the Office of the Governor for the State of Connecticut from 2011 to 2013. In this role, he served as chief legal advisor to the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor and senior staff of the Executive Branch of government.From 1991 to 2011, Justice McDonald worked in private practice commercial litigation with the firm of Pullman & Comley, LLC. From 1999 to 2002, Justice McDonald additionally served as the Director of Legal Affairs and Corporation Counsel for the City of Stamford.Justice McDonald was a State Senator from 2003 to 2011. He served as the Senate Chairman of the Judiciary Committee for all eight years he was in the General Assembly. During periods of his legislative career he also served as the Senate Vice Chairman of the Energy and Technology Committee and as a member of the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, the Transportation Committee, the Education Committee and the Regulations Review Committee. From 2005 to 2011, he served as Deputy Majority Leader of the Senate.Earlier in his career, Justice McDonald served on the Stamford Board of Finance from 1995 to 1999, including serving as the board's Chairman from 1997 to 1999, and as Co-Chair of the Audit Committee from 1995 to 1997. He began his public service career in 1993 as a member of the Stamford Board of Representatives, where he served until 1995.Justice McDonald and his husband, Charles, live in Hartford.

Denise W. Merrill served over 30 years in elected office in the State of Connecticut, first at the local level on the Mansfield Board of Education in 1991, then in the State Legislature for 17 years as State Representative from Mansfield, then finally as the Secretary of the State for three terms.First elected to the General Assembly in 1994, Secretary Merrill rose to the rank of House Majority Leader from 2009-2011. She also served as the House Chair of the budget writing Appropriations Committee from 2005-2009, as well as on the Education and Government Administration and Elections Committees. In a 2009 poll done by Connecticut magazine, Majority Leader Merrill was named by her colleagues in the legislature as "Most Respected by the Other Side of the Aisle" and "Most Effective Legislator". She focused on issues of education and higher education, helping to forge the ground-breaking "UConn 2000" legislation and a requirement that every student take a course in Civics to graduate from a public high school in Connecticut. Her work has been recognized by the CT Council on Social Studies, the New England Board of Higher Education, the CT Bar Association, among many others.As Secretary of the State, she was the Chief Elections official and business registrar. When in office, Secretary Merrill focused on modernizing Connecticut's elections and business services through introduction of new technologies.She was elected as President of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) during the 2016 Presidential Election. During that time, she created and served as Chair of the NASS Task Force on the Cybersecurity of Elections.Secretary Merrill is a graduate of the University of Connecticut and licensed to practice law in California. She has been a Board member of the UConn Alumni Association, was a founding member of the Women's Campaign School at Yale, founded and directed the Civics First program, and is still member of the CT Bar Association's Civics Education Committee. She is currently the Chair of the America 250 Commission of Connecticut.She trained as a concert pianist in Geneva Switzerland and still speaks decent French. She is a resident of Mansfield CT, is married to Dr. Stephen Leach, and has five grown children and six grandchildren.

JoAnn Price came to Farmington, CT in 1994 for the express purpose of founding what has become Fairview Capital Partners. Encouraged by members of the National Association of Investment Companies, Ms. Price became the catalyst for significant change in the way institutional investors approached diversity through investment. Today, the entire industry’s lexicon and initiatives around emerging managers and diversity in private equity investment can be traced to Fairview’s pioneering efforts.Ms. Price served as a director of the Vantagepoint Funds, as a member of the CT Board of Regents for Higher Education, as board chair of the Amistad Center for Art and Culture, and most recently as the Board Chair of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving. Currently, she is a member of 4-CT Board of Directors, the Howard University School of Business Board of Visitors, board member of the Apollo Theater Foundation in New York City, board member of Trinity Health of New England, board member of the Blue Hills Civic Association, and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Wilson Gray YMCA. She is also an active member of the Union Baptist church in Hartford.Ms. Price has been the recipient of numerous awards in the community, most recently as the recipient of the 2019 Hartford Business Journal’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018 she was presented with the Women’s Venture Fund’s Highest Leaf Award, and in 2017 was the honoree of New York’s nonprofit LIFT. In 2015, Ms. Price was the recipient of the Greater Hartford Torch of Liberty award presented by the Anti-Defamation League, and in 2014 was awarded the title of the Village for Families & Children’s Woman of the Year.Ms. Price leads by example and is not shy about encouraging her colleagues at Fairview to get involved in the community. At this point, Fairview professionals, largely through her direct encouragement, are involved in Hartford community organizations including the Mark Twain House, the Greater Hartford YMCA, the Bushnell, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, the CT Children’s Hospital, the Urban League of Greater Hartford, Camp Courant, the UConn Research and Development Foundation, Hartford Habitat for Humanity, and the CT Science Center.Additionally, Ms. Price continues to be generous with her time, her resources, and her prodigious talents in the office and out, helping individuals who come to her for skills counseling, career strategies, educational aid, personal crisis management, and general advice. Through all of this, she enjoys the quiet but strong support of her husband of many years, James Price, now a retired Tax attorney.Ms. Price is a graduate of Howard University.

Jason Rojas serves Connecticut’s 9th Assembly District, which is composed of parts of East Hartford and Manchester. He currently serves as House Majority Leader with responsibility for shaping House Democrats legislative agenda as well as managing the flow of legislation and House floor operations. He previously served as co-chair of the Finance, Revenue, and Bonding Committee, the Planning and Development Committee and Deputy Majority Leader. He also served on the Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee and the Education Committee. A lifelong resident of East Hartford, Mr. Rojas attended East Hartford Public Schools and was the first in his family to graduate from college, earning a history degree from the University of Connecticut and a master's degree in public policy from Trinity College.Outside of the legislature, Mr. Rojas serves as the president's chief of staff and associate vice president for external affairs, with primary responsibilities of administering the Office of the President at Trinity College. He has served on the board of directors of numerous nonprofits including three nonprofit housing development organizations, the Board of Trustees of the Boys and Girls Club of Hartford, the Manchester Community College Foundation, the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements, the I-Quilt Partnership as well as serving as a founding board member of the East Hartford Alumni Association and Education Foundation.Mr. Rojas is married to his high school sweetheart, Sarah, and they have three children and two cats.

Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial fellowship in 2022. She received her Ph.D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft prize. She taught at the University of Massachusetts for over twenty years where she was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal, the highest honor bestowed on faculty. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina which was named one of the ten best books on slavery in Politico and featured in The New York Times 1619 Project. Her recent book The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition, which won the Frederick Douglass, Avery Craven, James Rawley, and SHEAR Best Book prizes, was also long listed for the National Book Award for Non-Fiction. It was widely reviewed in the mainstream press and was named editor’s choice in The New York Times Book Review and the book of the week by Times Higher Education to coincide with its UK publication. She is the author and editor of several other books and articles. In 2018, she was a visiting Professor at the University of Paris, Diderot and in 2021, she received the James W.C. Pennington award, from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. She is on the Historians Advisory Committee of the American Civil War Museum and the Council of Advisors of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg, New York Public Library. She is a co-editor of the “Race and the Atlantic World, 1700-1900,” series of the University of Georgia Press and is on the editorial board of Slavery and Abolition. A historian of the long nineteenth century, her research interests lie in the transnational histories of slavery, abolition, and feminism and the history and legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Her latest book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920 is forthcoming from Liveright. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Karsten R. Stueber, a philosophy professor at the College of the Holy Cross, their two sons, Sheel and Shiv Stueber, and dog, Wylie.

Fiona Vernal is Associate Professor of History at the University of Connecticut, with extensive teaching and research interests in pre-colonial and colonial Africa, the history of South Africa and the African Diaspora. She holds a B.A. from Princeton, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale. Dr. Vernal has consulted with CHS on two oral history projects (September 11, Connecticut Responds and Reflects; and Finding a Place, Maintaining Ties: Greater Hartford’s West Indians) and is currently engaged in a photo-documentation project on Caribbean migration to Greater Hartford. She and her three children live in Manchester.

Jim Williams was a partner in the commercial real estate firm Kuzmak-Williams & Associates, which provides professional property management service, leasing and sales brokerage, development and consulting services to a wide variety of clients throughout New England. Mr. Williams is a former Chairman of the Building Owners & Managers Institute, a former Trustee and President of the CHS, and former Trustee and President of the Old State House Association. He proudly served 4 years in the United States Air Force, including a 13 month tour of duty in Vietnam. Mr. Williams also holds a B.S. in Accounting from Central Connecticut State University, along with graduate studies in the field of commercial real estate. He holds the following designations: C.P.A., R.P.A., and C.S.M. He and his wife, Linda, live in Cheshire.