JTS Gala Event on “Good Investing and Investing in Good” Will Honor Richard S. Pzena in May

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact: Beatrice Mora
Office: (212) 678-8950
Email:bemora@jtsa.edu



April 4, 2016, New York, NY

A May gala event presented by The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) will honor Richard S. Pzena, founder and chief investment officer of Pzena Investment Management, a participant in and supporter of Jewish adult education at JTS and elsewhere.

Mr. Pzena will take part in a panel discussion of “Good Investing and Investing in Good” with Abby Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs; Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors; and Joel Greenblatt of Gotham Capital and Gotham Asset Management. Scott Wapner, host of CNBC’s Fast Money Halftime Report, will be master of ceremonies.

The venue will be the Mandarin Oriental at 80 Columbus Circle, which overlooks Central Park with a magnificent view. The Tuesday, May 3, event will begin with cocktails at 6:30 p.m. and continue with dinner from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Dietary laws will be observed. Registration is online at www.jtsa.edu/Pzena, and sponsorship opportunities are available.

Richard S. Pzena is the founder and co-chief investment officer of Pzena Investment Management. He is the architect of the firm’s investment strategy and conceived and developed its proprietary screening model. Prior to forming the company, Mr. Pzena was the director of U.S. Equity Investments and chief research officer for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. He earned a BS summa cum laude and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Pzena’s relationship with JTS began with weekly Talmud classes taught by Rabbi David Hoffman. Since that time, he has been an advocate of continuing adult Jewish education through his involvement with Me’ah and the JTS Context program (which has now been integrated into JTS’s Community Engagement Department). Mr. Pzena served as chair of the Context Advisory Board. He is on the board of the Harlem Success Academy and a 2016 member of the Master Class of Portfolios with Purpose.

Abby Joseph Cohen is a partner and senior investment strategist at Goldman Sachs in New York. She has long been recognized as an industry leader in economics and portfolio strategy, and her career is the subject of a Harvard Business School case study. Ms. Cohen has been awarded several honorary doctorates, including one in engineering. She is a member of the JTS board of trustees and served as board chair for six years. She is also on the boards of the Brookings Institution, the Economic Club of New York, the Smithsonian Institution, and Weill Cornell Medical College. Ms. Cohen is a presidential councillor at Cornell University and chairs the steering committee of Jacobs Technion–Cornell Institute, the collaboration with Israel’s Technion Institute. She served as board chair of the Chartered Financial Analysts Institute, a global professional organization with more than 100,000 members. She advises several investment committees, including those of Brookings, Cornell, and Major League Baseball.

Lee Cooperman organized and launched Omega Advisors, an investment-management business, after retiring in 1991 from his positions as a general partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and as chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. For nine consecutive years, he was voted the number-one portfolio strategist in Institutional Investor magazine’s annual “All-America Research Team” survey. A designated Chartered Financial Analyst, Mr. Cooperman is a past president of the New York Society of Security Analysts. He is chairman emeritus of the Saint Barnabas Development Foundation; a member of the board of overseers of Columbia University Graduate School of Business and the board of directors of Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation; on the investment committee of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center; and board chairman of Green Spaces in Newark, New Jersey. He was inducted into the Horatio Alger Association in April 2015.

Joel M. Greenblatt is managing principal and co-chief investment officer of Gotham Asset Management, the successor to Gotham Capital, an investment firm he founded in 1985. He has been a member of the Pzena Investments board of directors since October 2007. Since 1996, he has been an adjunct professor at Columbia University Business School, where he teaches Value and Special Situation Investing. Mr. Greenblatt is the former chairman of the board of Alliant Techsystems, an NYSE-listed aerospace and defense company, and served on the investment boards of the University of Pennsylvania and the UJA—Federation. He is the author of three books on investing.

Scott Wapner is host of the Fast Money Halftime Report, which airs weekdays on CNBC. He has reported live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ Market Site, covering the real-time action of the global financial markets. In 2011, Mr. Wapner received an award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, as well as a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for his documentary One Nation, Overweight. His documentary on Ultimate Fighting earned an Emmy nomination. Before joining CNBC, Mr. Wapner served as the franchise business reporter for KDFW-TV in Dallas and was a reporter for Associated Press Television News, based in New York City.