WLL Advisory Board

As part of Marymount Manhattan College’s CityEdge program, each academic department sponsors an Advisory Board composed of accomplished professionals from across New York City with relevant knowledge, experience, and expertise in fields related to our respective programs. 

The WLL Advisory Board Members provide insight on the current and future state of their industry, assist with external relations and outreach to the industry, support career development initiatives, and identify job openings, internships and other professional opportunities.


Advisory Board Members

  • Amy Brandt ’14

    A native of Libertyville, Illinois, she trained at Dancenter North and the Milwaukee Ballet School before joining the Milwaukee Ballet, where she danced for eight seasons. In 2003 she became a member of The Suzanne Farrell Ballet, dancing featured roles in Balanchine’s AgonLa ValseDivertimento No. 15 and Pas de Dix, among others. She performed in honor of Ms. Farrell at the 2005 Kennedy Center Honors. While dancing professionally, Ms. Brandt began pursuing a college degree and writing extensively for several dance publications, including Pointe’s “Ask Amy” advice column. She graduated summa cum laude from Marymount Manhattan College with a BA in English and World Literatures, and has served as an associate editor for Dance Teacher and Dance Magazine.

  • Thomas Fabricio ’05

    During his time at Marymount Manhattan College, Mr. Fabricio was a member of the Sigma Tau Delta and Pi Sigma Alpha honor societies. During his senior year, Thomas was the Editor-in-Chief of Marymount’s student newspaper The Monitor. In 2008, Mr. Fabricio received the degree of Juris Doctor from Nova Southeastern University.  During law school, Mr. Fabricio clerked for the Third District Court of Appeal, in Miami-Dade County. Following law school, Mr. Fabricio was an associate in the Fort Lauderdale office of Walton Lantaff Schroeder and Carson, LLP where he practiced civil litigation. Thomas currently practices civil litigation with the multi-state law firm of Mintzer Sarowitz Zeris Ledva & Meyers in Miami, Florida. 

  • Ruth Facer ’05

    Through her work at Zillow Group, Inc., Mrs. Facer leads the Marketplace Extension team which focuses on new monetization ventures. For more than 12 years, Ruth has built and scaled successful teams focused on product, marketing and operations for digital media companies. Ruth is a student of leadership with a passion for employee experience, career development and workplace culture. At MMC, she was a founding member of the Marymount Literary Society and Sigma Tau Delta. She was published in The Marymount Manhattan Review and served as a News Editor and Staff Writer for The Monitor. Ruth graduated in 2005 with a BA in English. She lives with her husband Tom, a software engineer, and cat Witty in San Francisco.

  • Mary-Beth Hughes ’95

    Mary-Beth Hughes is the author of the novels, The Loved Ones, Wavemaker II, and the collection Double Happiness. Her stories have been published in A Public Space, The Georgia Review, The Mississippi Review, The St. Ann’s Review, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares, and have been collected in The Dictionary of Failed Relationships, Object Lessons: The Paris Review presents The Art of the Short Story,and 2011 Pushcart Prize XXXV. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the Pratt Institute and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  • Cameron Kelsall ’10

    Cameron’s byline has appeared in numerous publications, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, American Theatre, Time Out Philadelphia, The Asbury Park Press, Exeunt NYC and Drunken Boat, among others. He is currently the co-chief theater critic and chief opera critic for Broad Street Review, Philadelphia’s leading arts and culture website.

    Cameron is an active member of the Outer Critics Circle, American Theatre Critics Association and Music Critics Association of North America. He recently concluded two years of service as a judge for the Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre, the highest honor in Philadelphia performing arts. He is a sought-after lecturer and moderator on the subjects of theater, opera, classical music and chamber music.

    Cameron graduated from Marymount Manhattan College in 2010 with a BA in English and World Literature, with a Creative Writing minor. During his time at MMC, Cameron served as president of the Sigma Tau Delta honors society and Marymount Literary Society, and was editor-in-chief of The Marymount Manhattan Review. Following graduation, he earned a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Ohio University in Athens, OH, where he served as poetry editor of the nationally recognized literary journal Quarter After Eight.

    Cameron lives in Collingswood, NJ, with his husband, Westly Mandoske, an accountant and financial planner. In his spare time, he enjoys playing bridge.

  • Timothy Sparapani

    Tim Sparapani is a frequent public speaker on topics related to emerging technologies.  He has testified before Congress five times, has given more than 500 TV, radio and print interviews, and frequently writes for Forbes and other publications on these topics. Tim’s specialties are privacy, cybersecurity, technology and constitutional law with clients of a diverse mix of industry leading companies, dynamic technology startups, and thought-leading advocacy organizations. 

    Tim’s SPQR Strategies clients have asked him to undertake important, ongoing responsibilities.  For example, Tim served for 3 years as the Vice President, Policy, Law & Government Affairs for the Application Developers Alliance, a trade association serving more than 30,000 application “app” developers and 200 member companies.  Tim has also served as General Counsel for several app company and tech startups.  He advises other start-up tech companies on a range of policy matters including cybersecurity, patent reform, online safety and security.

    Tim was the first Director of Public Policy at Facebook. Tim was responsible for developing and implementing the company’s interaction with the federal, state, local and foreign governments and with opinion and policy makers.  He managed these roles as the company grew from 150 million to more than 900 million active users and from 350 employees to more than 3,000.  Prior to joining Facebook, Tim was Senior Legislative Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, where he helped advance the constitutional principle of the right to privacy, representing the ACLU before Congress, the Executive Branch and the media.  For the more than four years preceding his time at the ACLU, Tim served as an associate at the law firm of Dickstein Shapiro where he helped clients navigate interconnecting constitutional, statutory, political and policy challenges.  Tim holds a Bachelor’s degree with honors from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of Michigan.

  • Leslie A. Stone

    Leslie is a passionate champion of great people and big ideas. She thrives in collaboration with clients, suits and creatives alike; working with integrated teams to create the elusive “red thread”; brainstorming; and shepherding young talent. Leslie favors simplicity over jargon and conversation more than charts. This humanistic approach has fueled a career marked by award winning work across the brand, advertising, and media world as both hired gun and in-agency leader.

    For American Express, she created a blind social experiment: in-home cocktail parties that led to a modern reinterpretation of “Membership” and a new talent strategy. This brief became the Brand’s first ever global campaign: “My Life, My Card” featuring Ellen Degeneres, Robert DeNiro and M.Night Shyamalan (Gold Effie). In home research with spouses informed a 2-year NPD path and created the ONE card, a non-travel related credit card. Trend analysis, projective techniques, and on-the-street research led to a unique point of view for Wonderbra with a target audience inspired equally by Holly Go Lightly and Seinfeld’s Elaine (Silver Effie). In 2005, she was privileged to work directly with Tribeca Film Festival founders Jane Rosenthal and Robert DeNiro to craft a new mission statement. This work inspired a Gold Effie winning campaign, new film trailer and the Brand’s iconic
    logo. More importantly, the festival achieved its highest ever numbers for downtown economic recovery while increasing its industry legitimacy. For SAP she authored the brand strategy to the highly commoditized and competitive cloud category by using a strategy inspired by political campaigns. While working at Goodby Silverstein she led and won 2 major pitches for E*Trade and the best ever consumer electronic device: TiVo! She then partnered with Hoover to present and publish findings for the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) on the impact of DVR technology. In 2000 she predicted the Golden Age of Content well before the launch of WiFi, Hulu or Netflix. 

  • Caroline Tiger

    Since graduating from the University of Pennsylvania (English major), storytelling has been the common thread in Caroline Tiger’s career. She started out in book publishing, transitioned to magazine publishing, then went off on her own to work as a freelance author and journalist for more than a decade. As an independent writer, her work appeared in many publications, including DwellEntrepreneur and Wired. She is currently a Senior Content Strategist at Bresslergroup, a research-driven product innovation lab in Philadelphia, where she uses her journalism, editing, and content packaging skills to develop and implement the company’s communications, content, and social media strategy.

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