Annual Gala May 4th, 2016
The Foundation celebrated a successful evening at the Doubles Club. This year our gala centered around the remarkable achievements of two distinguished men who are close friends: Robert S. Birch and Michael W. Derchin.
Mr. Birch has had a lifetime of protean interest in the world around him; his love of the arts and music prompted his unstintingly generous philanthropy. A managing partner at Oppenheimer, he leads the firm’s investment roundtable. Much of Mr. Birch’s philanthropy is anonymous, ranging from saving a critical piece of land in Cape Cod to gifts to churches, schools and other New York institutions. He has advised and supported the Foundation since its inception; his counsel and the generosity of his contributions have been vital to our growth the success of our mission.
Mr. Derchin is the world’s expert on the history and development of the airline industry throughout the world. His work has involved global coverage of every aspect of international commerce: Institutional Investor Magazine and other polls have named him the number one airline analyst on Wall Street. His most recent delightful tribute was having an Airbus A-320 Aircraft named after him by Volaris Airlines of Mexico. His generous support of the Foundation has been a significant factor in the growth and stability of our success.
Dr. Marianne Legato, Professor Emerita of Clinical Medicine at Columbia University is an internationally known academic physician, author, lecturer, and specialist in gender-specific medicine. She is founding member of the International Society for Gender Medicine and also the founder and director of The Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University and its next iteration, The Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine. These enterprises are the first collaborations between academic medicine and the private sector focused solely on gender-specific medicine: the science of how normal human biology differs between men and women and of how the diagnosis and treatment of disease differs as a function of gender and sex. Her ground breaking textbook on Gender-and Sex Specific Medicine has been published in 2017 in the 3rd edition.
She has published extensively on Gender and Sex Specific Medicine, both scientifically and for the lay public. She is also the founding editor of the journal Gender Medicine, and the Journal Gender and Genome, published for the scientific community. In 1992, Dr. Legato won the American Heart Association’s Blakeslee Award for the best book written for the lay public on cardiovascular disease. She is a practicing internist in New York City and has been listed each year in New York Magazine’s “Best Doctors” since the feature’s inception in 1993.
