Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - July/August 2008 - (Page 19)

The Good Guys Adopt This School! When he saw how much some classrooms needed money, Peter Cohen formed his own charity. By Danielle Beurteaux P eter Cohen gets irate when he talks about cuts in New York City public school funding for physical education, art and music, the kind of offerings most students in the U.S. take for granted. “I’ve always felt education is one of the biggest needs this country faces,” says Cohen, a founding director of Ramius, a New York–based hedge fund and fund-offunds ﬁ rm with more than $12 billion in assets under management. For years he wrote a check here and made a contribution there in hopes of addressing what he considered a fundamental social weakness. But it wasn’t until 2003, when he visited bare-bones public schools in Brooklyn and Manhattan, that he decided to try to do something more about it. “I was completely blown away,” Cohen says, when he saw how strapped for assistance the schools were. “I asked, ‘What do you need?’” Such were the origins of a personal adopt-a-school program that he hopes will catch on among hedge fund managers. Cohen, who has the connections to make things happen (he was chairman and CEO of Shearson Lehman in the 1980s), formally kicked off his effort in 2006 by establishing a foundation called Ideas — Investing in the Development and Educational Advancement of Students — with the intent of providing air conditioners, computers and other equipment that schools couldn’t otherwise afford, as well as funding for after-school and summer programs. Cohen brought a number of Ramius colleagues on board: partner Michael Boxer, human resources director Jane Gerhard, managing member Jeffrey Solomon and marketing executive Joan Werner. His daughter, Lauren Cohen Starr, has been a guiding force at Ideas through two friends and fellow Brown University alumni who became school principals in New York City: Alex Shub, founder and principal of Essex Street Academy, a high school on Manhattan’s Lower East Side; and Allison Keil, founder and co-principal of Community Roots Charter School, an elementary school in Brooklyn. The two schools are pilot partners in Cohen’s foundation. The principals submit a wish list and then work with the Ideas board to decide where the money would be best spent. Essex Street Academy promotes itself as a provider of private-school-quality education to students who can’t afford or choose not to attend such schools. It emphasizes small classes and quality time with teachers. Shub says he aims to have an 85 to 95 percent graduation rate Photo by John Christenson for Alpha — compared with a 55 percent citywide average. (Essex Street’s ﬁrst class graduated in June, and 90 percent of its seniors received diplomas.) When a particularly bright senior stands out, Ramius offers a paid internship at the ﬁrm. “I’m impressed by his ability to empathize and put his money where his heart is,” Shub says of Cohen. Community Roots aims for high achievement by having two teachers in every classroom, an optional extended school day and an emphasis on parent-teacher communication. Though Cohen, who turns 62 in August, thinks the absence of national standards is at the root of the dispar- ity between schools, he sees plenty to do on his home turf. Ideas will remain a local program, focused on New York’s five boroughs. “There’s no money for phys ed teachers. There’s no money for art,” Cohen says. “You could have the next Picasso sitting in your classroom, and you’d never know it.” For more information, go to www.ideasnyc.org. Peter Cohen has adopted a public school in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn. JULY/AUGUST 2008 • INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR’S ALPHA • 19 http://www.ideasnyc.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - July/August 2008

Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - July/August 2008 Contents Letter from the Editor Longs & Shorts Pension Corner: Mr. Big Goes Small The Good Guys: Adopt This School! Interview: Man's Great Hope Cover Story: The Gentleman Activist Strategies: The New Bankers Profile: Staying Alive Research Center: The Best of the East The Asian Sensations Alpha Bytes: Into the Light Unhedged: Commentary: Speculating on Washington

Institutional Investor's Alpha Magazine - July/August 2008

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