Supporters

Foundations and Religious Institutions

• American Baptist Church (World Relief Service)-One Great Hour of Sharing
• Antioch Baptist Church, Bedford Hills, NY
• Ben & Jerry's Foundation
• Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
• Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Indianapolis, IN
• Collegiate Church Corporation
• Community Foundation of NJ
• Community Health Systems Foundation
• First Congregational Church, Berkeley, CA
• First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York
• Ford Foundation
• Ford Foundation Institute of International Education
• Jackson Memorial AME Zion Church, Hempstead, NY
• Marble Collegiate Church
• Mertz Gilmore Foundation
• Metzger Price Fund, Inc
• The Needmor Fund
• New World Foundation
• North Shore Presbyterian Church, Milwaukee, WI
• Park Avenue Christian Church, New York, NY
• Park Avenue United Methodist Church
• Presbyterian Church of Upper Montclair, Upper Montclair, NJ
• Presbyterian Hunger Program
• Presbytery of New York City
• Riverside Church Sharing Fund
• Scarsdale Community Baptist Church, Scarsdale, NY
• Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary
• St. Paul Community Baptist Church, Brooklyn, NY
• The Sister Fund
• Trinity Grants Program
• United Church of Christ Justice & Peace Ministries – Neighbors in Need
• United Methodist Church- The Poverty Scholars Program is an official project of Church’s designated giving arm called The Advance
• US Human Right Fund
• Week of Compassion, Disciples of Christ

Poverty Initiative Committee

The Poverty Initiative receives support, advice and guidance from the Poverty Initiative Committee. Union Trustees, Alumni and former Trustees from Union serve on this committee. Members include: Douglas Ades (co-chair), David Callard, Aiyoung Choi, Barbara Fiorito (co-chair), Susan Hermanson, Stephen Hudspeth, Rev. David H. McAlpin Jr, Rev. Ted Pardoe, Art Trotman, Michaela Walsh, and Mitchell Watson (co-chair).

Since 1965 and the civil rights movement in Mississippi, Douglas Ades has been working with the poor. A Union student in 1966, he was a street worker for heroin addicts in Harlem’s Street Academy program. After graduating, he began working for a major NYC bank to set up outreach to New York minority communities. Along with UTS trustee, Barbara Fiorito, Douglas set up the Streetbanker program to provide loans and grants to those community organizations. He became an independent consultant to help other major financial institutions create programs that reached out to help both their communities and the companies. As a consultant, he was a trainer for the Dreyfus Health Foundation, helping doctors and health professionals problem solve with available resources located in: Zambia, China, India, Tibet, Jordan, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, and the United States.

Since the 1990s, Douglas started work primarily in Eastern Europe (e.g. Poland) to create economic development programs that enabled poor and lower classes to take personal economic responsibility.  These programs included the first regional microfinance organizations and the establishment of the largest private foundation in Eastern Europe.

David Callard has spent his career in the financial world, working in: the investment area at J.P. Morgan; investment banking and real estate as a partner of Alex Brown & Sons; private equity investments as President of Wand Partners; and, currently, wealth management as Chairman of Pelican Investment Management.

He has been an active church member throughout his life.  In addition to military service, he has worked in government, first as aide to a Congressman and, later, as Deputy Executive Director of the Presidential Commission, which initiated the All-Volunteer Armed Forces.  In the 1960s and 1970s, he was involved in providing education to high school dropouts through Street Academies that were funded by large corporations and the Ford Foundation.  He helped start Episcopal Charities, which supports social welfare projects based in local parishes in the Diocese of New York.  He has been involved in The Enterprise Foundation for two decades, an organization dedicated to fostering low-income housing and community development in poor neighborhoods.

Currently, David is the Chair of the Board of Trustees at Union Theological Seminary.

Aiyoung Choi is a consultant on organizational development for nonprofit organizations.  Her work includes strategic planning, board development, human resource management, board and staff   transitions, and strengthening infrastructure and capacity. Prior to 2004 she was Senior Program Officer at Community Resource Exchange, a management-consulting group helping nonprofit organizations that provide social, health and educational services in under-resourced communities.

An active volunteer, Aiyoung is a former board member of Union Theological Seminary and Asian Americans for Equality, and currently is on the boards of the New York Women’s Foundation, Manhattan Country School, Jezebel Productions, and the Korean American Family Service Center, which she chaired from 1996-2004. She co-founded the Asian Women Giving Circle in 2006 and serves on its board, and is an advisory council member of NetKAL, Korean American Community Foundation, White Wave Dance Company, Metropolitan College of New York, and Hermandad, Inc., developing water resources in the Dominican Republic.  She has received numerous honors for her community service including the 2008 Manhattan Borough President’s Distinguished Leadership Award and the Coalition for Asian American Children & Families’ Caring for Children Award.

Born in Korea and raised in China and Japan, Aiyoung came to the U.S. to attend college and received a B.A. in Arts and Languages from Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.  She has two sons, Carlos Garcia who lives in Washington DC, and Cris Garcia who lives in Hong Kong. She and her husband Gene live on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

From 2005 to December 2008 Barbara Fiorito served as a Director and Board Chair of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations (FLO) International, the global NGO representing over 650 disadvantaged producer organizations from 60 developing countries and licensing FairTrade Certified products to consumers in 22 countries.

Previously, she served on Oxfam America’s Board from 1992, then as Board Chair and Deputy Chair of Oxfam International from 2000-2005.  Her leadership helped transform Oxfam America from a grants-based NGO into an influential global campaigning and advocacy organization.

Professionally, from 1964 through 1992, Ms. Fiorito held executive positions in the private sector.  At Chemical Banking she founded the ‘Not-for-Profit Group, financial services specialists to academic, healthcare, religious, cultural & social service institutions, and foundations. In the 1970’s she developed a “Streetbanker” program - a model for financial institutions to stimulate small business opportunities in underdeveloped urban communities. She served in the US Peace Corps (1968-70) Manila, Philippines and on many philanthropic boards including; currently, Union Theological Seminary, NYC; Chair of the Oxfam America Advocacy Fund, Boston & DC; and, TransFair USA, Advisory Board - Oakland CA.

She is married to Michael Shimkin; they have five children and five grandchildren, and reside in New York.

Susie Hermanson received her MDiv from Union in 2007. Currently, she is Community Minister at Judson Memorial Church, initiating Step By Step services there, and serving as part-time minister with the South Lyme Chapel in Connecticut.  She is under care toward ordination with the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme CT, and had been active with Poverty Initiative Immersions and fund-raising.

Steve Hudspeth retired from law practice with a large international law firm headquartered in New York City at year-end 2004.  For the dozen years before my retirement, Steve headed the firm’s global litigation department and also chaired its pro bono committee.  The latter involved oversight of the firm’s work in corporate and litigation matters in areas ranging from immigration, domestic violence, and criminal law to corporate-type legal advice given to nonprofits working in areas as diverse as the arts and senior housing.

Since his retirement from the firm four years ago, he has focused on teaching at the graduate level, both at Yale (where he was undergraduate, graduate and law school alumnus) and at Union.  At Union, his courses have been on law and social justice and on church, temple and nonprofit administration (the latter co-taught with Mary McNamara).  At Yale, he teaches principally at its Graduate School of Management where he teaches courses on commercial law, nonprofit law, and ethics; however, in the fall Steve will be stepping in at the Law School to cover for a clinical professor who is going on sabbatical.  He continues a limited practice of law mostly in the area of pro bono work focused on foster care and related family law matters, though he does continue with some commercial law work.

Rev. David H. McAlpin Jr grew up in Princeton and graduated from Princeton University in 1950 and Union Theological Seminary In New York in 1953.  He served as Pastor of Presbyterian churches in New Jersey and Michigan.  His first charge was at the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in Princeton starting in 1956 as Associate Pastor, and returning in the 1980s as Interim Pastor and Parish Associate.

He was a founder of Habitat for Humanity - Trenton Area in 1986 and served as its President until 2001.  During those years this affiliate built fifty houses for low-income families in Trenton and Princeton.

Beginning in 1976, Rev. McAlpin has served as Trustee and President of The New Jersey Association on Correction, The Princeton Blairstown Center, which provides experiential education to inner city youth, and The Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association, which protects the natural environment of most of Mercer County.  He is currently a Trustee of the Historical Association of Princeton, Habitat for Humanity - Trenton Area, and Union Theological Seminary in New York.

After the death of his first wife, Rev. McAlpin married Sally Dallam McAlpin in 1995. They have a combined family of seven children and nine grandchildren.

Rev. Ted Pardoe received his undergraduate B.S. from Trinity College, CT in 1978.  He worked on Wall Street at Brown Brothers Harriman from 1979 to 1996. He held his first not-for-profit position at the Interfaith Center of New York in 1999/2000.  Ted attended Union Theological Seminary from 2001-2005 where he received his M.Div.  Ted got involved in the Poverty Initiative when he participated in the first Poverty Initiative immersion in January 2005. Since that time, he has taken one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Beth Israel Hospital 2005/2006 and was an STM candidate at General Theological Seminary.  Ted was ordained to the transitional Diaconate in the Episcopal Diocese of New York on March 7, 2009.  He received his ordination to the priesthood on Sept. 12, 2009.

Arthur Trotman (co-chair) grew up in New Haven, Connecticut during the 2nd World War, attended Harvard Business School in 1964, and worked for 32 years at General Food Corp. During this career, he occupied positions in Marketing and General Management. He spent 15 years overseas (Puerto Rico, Mexico, Paris, Australia) with his family, acquiring an adaptability that comes from breaking away from communities and entering new ones every three years.

Shortly after becoming a Trustee of Union Theological Seminary, Art had the opportunity to join the early stages of the Poverty Initiative. Here, Art met Jean Rice, one of the first Poverty Scholars, who was dedicated to promoting the legal rights of homeless people. Together, Jean and Art have demonstrated for civil rights for homeless people, i.e. the right to panhandle and the right to shelter.

Since 1970, Michaela Walsh has spent her life working in and for the NGO communities around the world.  She believes the hope for the empowerment of the low income members of the world is to build collaborative systems and infrastructures, together - with the support of those may have skills to offer - and with the understanding that there are no experts who have the answer as to how to accomplish equality and to empower the disadvantaged.

Mitchell Watson (co-chair) began working with Poverty through a Presbyterian Church in 1965 in Norwalk, New Haven and Kenya.  It meshed with his love of young people and a feeling that we could make a difference. Mitchell later moved to Maine and started a company that provided low-end electronic jobs and a scholarship foundation to poor young people.  More recently Mitchell was a co-founder of the Community Care Clinic, a free medical clinic in Western North Carolina. He also founded Music in the Mountains to provide Classical String training to young students in the rural mountains.

At the Poverty Initiative he tries to do whatever he can- usually raising money and working with our many volunteers. He serves as Chair of the Brevard Music Center and as chairman emeritus of Helen Keller International working to prevent blindness and malnutrition across the world.