Will Maitland Weiss,
Executive Director, Arts and Business Council of New York

Based in Manhattan, the Arts & Business Council of New York is a partnership devoted to stimulating alliances, benefitting both the arts and business sectors and the communities that they serve.

Will Maitland Weiss was named Executive Director of the Arts and Business Council of New York in 2005. Before joining the Arts and Business Council of New York, he served as vice president of development and communications for New York City Center, producer of the award-winning Encores! series of American musicals and NYC performance home to Alvin Ailey, American Ballet Theatre, Paul Taylor, Manhattan Theatre Club, and others.

Prior to that, he spent ten years as deputy director of development for the New York City Opera, where he oversaw a staff of 14 and annually raised more than $11 million, and five years as marketing director, then development director, then managing director of the Off-Broadway CSC Repertory. After receiving his Master in Fine Arts, (MFA), in stage direction from Brandeis University, he spent several years as stage manager, then production manager, then managing director of a LORT theater and multi-arts presenting facility in New England.

He has lectured on arts administration at Brooklyn College/City University of New York, Brown University, New York University, and Williams College, and serves on the board of the Center for Creative Resources, a nonprofit firm providing development, marketing, and management services to small and midsized arts organizations and individual artists’ projects.

Will Maitland Weiss can be contacted at wmweiss@artsandbusiness-ny.org

Alessandra DiGiusto,
Chief Administrative Officer, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation

Ms. DiGiusto oversees the grantmaking activities for the Deutshe Bank Americas Foundation and is responsible for all marketing, public relations, legal, compliance, operations, financial and tax planning. She also manages the art sponsorships and grantmaking for the Americas.

Previously, she was head of the Marketing Group of Deutsche Bank Private Banking in the U.S., where she developed and executed the branding strategy to support the U.S. Private Bank's goals and oversaw implementation of the name change for the Private Client Asset Management (PCAM) Division. Prior to this position, she supervised the integrated marketing unit for DB Alex. Brown Brokerage and Private Banking. Prior to joining Bankers Trust in 1993, she was a vice president at Citicorp Investment Services. She has also worked as a vice president at Citibank's Consumer Bank and at Shearson Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.

Ms. DiGiusto received a Bachelor of Arts, (BA), from Oberlin College and an Master in Business Administration, (MBA), in finance and marketing from the Stern School of Business at New York University. She is a board member of the Bronx Museum and the West Side YMCA, an Executive Member of the Financial Women’s Association, and serves on Deutsche Bank’s Steering Committee for Women. She is also a Member of the Corporation of The New York Botanical Garden. She formerly was a board member of Greenhope Service for Women and served on the Executive and the Admissions Advisory Boards for Oberlin College. She also launched and managed the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program at Bankers Trust.

Averlyn Archer,
Program Director Harlem Arts Alliance

Ms. Archer manages training and education programs, marketing, and administration for the Harlem Arts Alliance, a community-based nonprofit arts institution. She is also the Gallery Director of the Canvas Paper and Stone Gallery, which focuses on emerging and mid-career contemporary artists in all media, and co-produced the first ArtCrawl Harlem™, a guided tour of local galleries. Ms. Archer has more than ten years’ experience working in internet advertising and e-commerce, and previously worked as a corporate attorney, with a particular focus on multimedia and interactive technology. She is a member and past president of Harlem Toastmasters and a member of the Association of Black Women Attorneys and the nascent Harlem Gallery Coalition.

Ms. Archer received a Bachelor of Arts, (BA) from the City College, City University of New York; and a Juris Doctor, (JD), from the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, where she was named the Samuel Belkin Scholar for her exceptional contribution to the growth and development of the law school.

Averlyn Archer can be contacted at averlyn@harlemaa.org

Ellen F. Salpeter,
Director, Heart of Brooklyn

Ms. Salpeter has almost two decades of not-for-profit experience in arts and culture. As the founding Director of Heart of Brooklyn, she is frequently asked to share strategies with other cultural clusters that recognize the power of partnership, and is also sought after to moderate panels and discussions on issues in contemporary art and culture.

Ms. Salpeter is an adjunct professor at New York University in Arts Administration and currently serves on the boards of Elizabeth Streb Ringside, The Builder’s Association, and Participant. She is also a Vice President of Arttable, a national organization for professional women in the arts. She serves on the advisory boards of Momenta Arts and the Contemporary Council of the Brooklyn Museum and is a founding board member of the Sadie Nash Leadership Project, a young women’s mentoring program based in Brooklyn. Ms. Salpeter received a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Arts, (BSBA), from Georgetown University.

Ellen F. Salpeter can be contacted at esalpeter@heartofbrooklyn.org

Michael Unthank,
Executive Director, Harlem Arts Alliance

In addition to his work with the Harlem Arts Alliance, Mr. Unthank serves as an arts management and planning consultant and advisor to clients in and beyond New York City. From 1990 through 2004 he was head of State/Local Partnerships for the New York State Council on the Arts, (NYSCA), where he was responsible for policy development and oversight of the agency’s decentralized grants program, and where he initiated development and leadership training programs for artists and arts administrators. Prior to working at NYSCA, he served as Special Assistant for Programs and, later, as Director of Public Events at the New York Department of Cultural Affairs. He has also worked at Just Us and The Peoples Survival Theatre companies of Atlanta, and with the Billie Holiday Theatre in Bedford Stuyvesant.

Unthank has served as advisory panelist for the Louisiana Division of the Arts, the South Carolina Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, and as a trustee of the Children’s Art Carnival of Harlem. In addition, he served as Chair for the Community Development Interest Area and as a member of the Policy Committee for the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. He is currently working on several documentary film projects including as executive producer for Dancing Like Home, a film focusing on dance traditions of Senegal. A native of Philadelphia, Unthank holds a Bachelor of Arts, (BA), in Journalism from Hampton University and studied at the New School University, Master of Arts Program in Media Studies. He currently resides in Harlem.

Michael Unthank can be contacted at michael@harlemaa.org

Tom Parsons,
Let's Travel's Travel Deals Guru

By Tom Parsons' own admission, he is nothing more than a regular traveler who wants to save money and help others save. And that he does. As other people collect stamps, etc., Parsons collects cheap airfares and discount travel rates, and then he tells everyone about them.

Parsons got his start as a discount travel hound in the late 1970s when he was a traveling corporate executive. He noticed the wide variance in travel fares, even on the same airline flight. Using his natural analytical abilities and some good old sleuthing, Parsons unearthed some breakthrough methods to save dramatically on airfares and told everyone.

Parsons now appears on over 100 radio and television talk shows each month, dispensing his knowledge of hidden travel deals and fare secrets to audiences of shows ranging from NBC's The Today Show, ABC's Good Morning America and The Oprah Winfrey Show to nationally syndicated radio such as Let's Travel!, Bloomberg Business Radio and the AP Radio Network.

Since 1983, Parsons has become the Ralph Nader of the air. He has established a reputation as the traveler's friend and confidant, someone to trust. His goal is to inform the general public about the truth in the travel industry. And as always, his mission is about saving money.