Arthur Ainsberg

Arthur Ainsberg is a writer and a Wall Street executive.  A veteran of the financial services industry, Mr. Ainsberg has served in senior management and consulting roles at Oppenheimer, Odyssey Partners, and Morgan Stanley.

Mr. Ainsberg is also a scholar on the Endurance, the early 20th century expedition to Antarctica by Sir Ernest Shackleton. In 2008, he published his first book, Shackleton: Leadership Lessons from Antarctica, which highlights the most important leadership lessons to be learned from Shackleton’s story. Mr. Ainsberg speaks and lectures frequently on the lessons of Shackleton’s nearly 17 months at sea, including nearly 15 months stranded on an ice island.

Mr. Ainsberg has experienced his own medical challenges, having been diagnosed in 1975 at the age of twenty-eight with Hodgkin’s Disease. At the time of his diagnosis, doctors had only recently developed a method of treatment that could cure the disease.  His interest in medicine, born from personal experience, combined with his love of history, set him on the path to writing his book: BREAKTHROUGH: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle, which St. Martin’s Press published in September 2010.

Mr. Ainsberg continues to work in the financial sector. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of several New York Stock Exchange companies.

In 2009, Mr. Ainsberg was named the Chief Operating Officer for the Lehman Brothers Inc., In Liquidation Bankruptcy, which represents the largest and most complex bankruptcy in American history.

A widely recognized securities expert witness, Mr. Ainsberg has testified in a number of securities fraud cases on issues involving due diligence, regulatory compliance, suitability, valuation, and securities damages.

Mr. Ainsberg received his BBA and MBA degrees in accounting and finance, respectively, from Baruch College and has been a member of its Board of Trustees since 1995.  An avid traveler, Mr. Ainsberg has visited all fifty states and fifty-five countries on seven continents. He has also been to every baseball stadium and presidential museum in America.  He currently resides in New York City, where he was born, educated, and has spent his entire career.

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Thea Cooper

Thea Cooper is a writer, editor, and teacher.  She wrote her first poem in second grade and has been writing ever since.

Throughout her professional career Thea has applied her love of language and narrative structure to a range of environments, from higher education to corporate communications, creating effective, audience-centric communications and strategies in both the profit and nonprofit sectors.  Her specialty is synthesizing complex or esoteric content and identifying an organic narrative structure within bodies of information.  She has worked in print, spoken word presentation, and online.

Thea has a B.A. in English from Bard College and an M.F.A. in playwriting from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa.  Her plays have been produced in theaters and festivals across the country.

She lives in Seattle.