Team
OurAdvisors
Gary Cohen
Chair, Board of Advisors
Currently, serving as Vice-Chair of Board of Trustees at Community Board at Northern Westchester Hospital, Gary is the former Chairman of IBM Africa and General Manager of the Global Communications Sector for IBM. Among his many other senior leadership roles in IBM are Vice President of Strategy, in which he served as the principal architect of IBM’s business growth strategies and a member of the Chairman’s Senior Leadership Team, General Manager of IBM Global Telecommunications Industry, Vice President of IBM Communications Sector – Asia Pacific, Vice President of the IBM Consulting Group, and Vice President of IBM Marketing of the Internet Division. Gary is deeply passionate about Africa and sustainability; his family has helped thousands of people through their AIDS-focused clinic in South Africa through charity Gift of Hope USA. Through his roles as Advisory Council Member for Africa Leadership Academy and Africa Leadership University, Gary has been dedicating time to help groom future entrepreneurial talent in Africa. Cohen holds a BSc in economics and psychology from Union College and an MBA in finance from New York University.
Chair, Board of Advisors
Norm Boone
Norm Boone is the founder and president of Mosaic Financial Partners, Inc. Norm has an aptitude for financial matters, an interest in life coaching, and a fascination with complex family relationships, all of which have helped Mosaic become one of the most highly-regarded advisory firms in the country.
Norm has been consistently recognized as one of the nation’s best financial planners since 1994 by Worth, Barron’s and Medical Economics magazines. Norm earned his CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ designation in 1984, after receiving his undergraduate education at Stanford University and his MBA in Finance from the Harvard Business School. Norm also served as an officer in the United States Army.
Throughout his career, Norm has been active in the communities he serves and champions. Norm enjoys sharing his expertise and is a prolific writer. He has been a columnist for Wealth Manager and Technology Today magazines, as well as the Fi360 blog, and has authored numerous articles in various publications, primarily on topics related to practice management and prudent investment practices. He is the co-author of the investment textbook “Creating an Investment Policy Statement—Guidelines and Templates” and founded the companion online software, IPS AdvisorPro®.
Norm is the father of two successful adult children. He and his wife Linda (president of her own advisory firm in Miami, Florida) love to play golf and frequently travel internationally to far-flung locations on all continents of the world, including Antarctica and the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Norm is passionate about economic empowerment of disadvantaged communities. He serves as a treasurer and board member of Spring Impact (a global not-for-profit helping successful non-profits scale to be able to serve more beneficiaries in even better ways).
Jackie is founder of Global Cadence PR/Social Media Marketing consultancy, Artists At War (a multi-media platform of interviews with artists living in war zones or in exile) and Haley Art Gallery (an art gallery and gift shop in Maine showcasing social impact products empowering artists and women artisans worldwide). Jackie has consulted with such PR/Marketing agencies as Brodeur, Shandwick, Media Boston International and Bridgeview Marketing among others. She serves on the Board of Directors of Democracy Today NGO (Armenia) and Forum 2000 Working Group on Women, Democracy, Human Rights and Security (Prague) to ensure women are equally presented as speakers and experts in global meetings and events.
Jackie received her BS in Journalism & English from Suffolk University followed by graduate studies in Mass Communications at Emerson College, and Social Entrepreneurship at Copenhagen Business School.
Board of Advisors
Magatte Wade
Magatte Wade is an entrepreneur and advocate for African dignity and prosperity. Her TED talk, "Why it is too hard to start a business in Africa - and how to change it" has been seen by more than 600K people. She is a Forbes “20 Youngest Power Women in Africa”, a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum at Davos, a TED Global Africa Fellow, and a "Leading Woman in Wellness” award winner by the Global Wellness Summit. In 2014 she was featured on the cover of Forbes Afrique for being the person in Francophone Africa having the greatest positive impact on the future.
She serves as the Director of the Atlas Network's Center for African Prosperity. Wade is a member of the board of Directors of Conscious Capitalism Inc. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Whole Planet Foundation, of Whole Foods Market. She has written for The Guardian, HuffingtonPost.com, and Barron’s, and has been profiled by the NYT. She has spoken at numerous high-profile venues including the U.N., The Clinton Global Initiative, the Aspen Institute, TED, Conscious Capitalism, and many dozens of universities including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, MIT, UC Berkeley, Dartmouth, and the Wharton School of Business.
Throughout her career, she has created successful high-end retail brands inspired by diverse African traditions, most recently SkinIsSkin.com.
Wade believes that the “cheetah generation,” a new cohort of dynamic African entrepreneurs and professionals identified by Ghanian economist George Ayittey, will create local pathways for change that will shape the future of African prosperity. “Perhaps the most unique challenge we face is that the world has come to perceive that Africans themselves are not capable of creating prosperity—and require charity in order to survive,” she said. “This simply isn’t true. The combination of negative perceptions of Africans, combined with widespread ignorance regarding the need for economic freedom is a toxic combination.”
Board of Advisors
Jackie Abramian
Jackie is a multi-lingual PR, Marketing and Social Media executive with over 25 years’ experience in creating and launching integrated communications campaigns for global technology, social enterprises, EdTech, renewable energy and the arts sector as well as NGOs and non-profits. She has designed and launched national multi-media public education campaigns to influence public awareness and behavior for such organizations as National Institutes of Health (Nat. Institute of Mental Health – Clinical Depression Campaign), U.S. FDA (New Food Label), American Cancer Society (Anti-Tobacco Campaign), Solar Energy Business Association of New England (Solar Energy), U.S. Postal Service among others. Jackie is passionate about promoting social entrepreneurship, women’s empowerment, and impact investments through her regular articles & columns in Forbes, Grit Daily, Thrive Global, and Huffington Post.
Jackie is founder of Global Cadence PR/Social Media Marketing consultancy, Artists At War (a multi-media platform of interviews with artists living in war zones or in exile) and Haley Art Gallery (an art gallery and gift shop in Maine showcasing social impact products empowering artists and women artisans worldwide). Jackie has consulted with such PR/Marketing agencies as Brodeur, Shandwick, Media Boston International and Bridgeview Marketing among others. She serves on the Board of Directors of Democracy Today NGO (Armenia) and Forum 2000 Working Group on Women, Democracy, Human Rights and Security (Prague) to ensure women are equally presented as speakers and experts in global meetings and events.
Jackie received her BS in Journalism & English from Suffolk University followed by graduate studies in Mass Communications at Emerson College, and Social Entrepreneurship at Copenhagen Business School.
Board of Advisors
Tom Sheehy
Tom is currently a Principal / Founder at Quinella Global, providing a range of consulting services in public policy, legislative intelligence and international affairs. He has decades of public policy and communications success, particularly in the foreign policy, national security, and international economics fields. Before founding Quinella Global, he served as Staff Director of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the U.S. House of Representatives for six years. Chaired by Representative Ed Royce, the committee has jurisdiction over all elements of U.S. foreign policy, including operations of the State Department, Agency for International Development, and Development Finance Corporation. Tom was responsible for all committee functions, including goal-setting, its $7.5 million annual budget, oversight hearings, communications, working with congressional leadership offices and other national security committees, and managing legislation.
Under Tom’s leadership, over 80 bills –on a full-range of foreign and national security policy issues-- became public laws. These included major sanctions, export control, and cutting-edge trade and development legislation. The committee was widely-recognized as being one of the most bipartisan and productive on Capitol Hill. Previously, Tom directed the Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade Subcommittee and the Africa Subcommittee. He co-produced the Foreign Intrigue Blog and his work helped put Africa on the U.S. foreign policy map.
Tom earned a B.A. from Trinity College (Hartford) and an M.A. in International Relations from the University of Virginia. Tom and his wife Elizabeth live in Arlington, Virginia.
Board of Advisors
Todd Bloom
Todd is managing partner at WGU Labs Fund, and founding managing director of Accelerator at WGU Labs. Todd designed and began the Accelerator in 2019. And, recently, Todd founded WGU Labs Fund as its Managing Partner. The fund invests in Accelerator companies that Todd and his team serve. Todd comes to WGU Labs from the Jefferson Education Accelerator at the University of Virginia, where he served as Chief Academic Officer of the Accelerator and Research Associate Professor at UVA. As CAO, Todd led all sales and services to education technology companies in the K-12 and higher education markets. Jefferson Education Accelerator and its fund, the Jefferson Education Fund, are now owned by Strada Education Network. Prior to joining the Jefferson Education Accelerator in 2015, Todd spent five plus years as the Chief Academic Officer for Hobsons, a K-12 and higher education software company formerly own by the Daily Mail and General Trust. Todd began his career as a teacher on the Navajo Indian Reservation.