Out & About

BEAMING PARENTS AND DONORS The child and adolescent psychiatry practiced at the New York University Child Study Center has brightened the outlook of hundreds of New York families, and that has inspired a great deal of generosity. This year’s fund-raiser raised $6.7 million.“We are extraordinarily lucky to have donors who are passionate about fighting childhood mental disorders,” the director of the center, Dr. Harold Koplewicz, said.It wasn’t easy finding funding when the center started nine years ago. “Donors seemed hesitant to contribute for fear that their children would be labeled as having a mental health disorder,” the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn, a chairman of the dinner, said. But contribute they did.“When you have something that is effective, the city responds,” a hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller of Duquesne Capital Management, who was honored at the event along with his wife, Fiona, said. The state has taken notice too: It has put forth $30 million to help the center build a stand-alone facility.“The thing that every parent wants for their child is happiness and the ability to live up to their potential,” Council Member Eric Gioia said. “The Child Study Center has made this their mission.”HONORING CITY DIPLOMATS The city’s tourism marketing organization, NYC & Company, helped welcome nearly 45 million tourists this year, but they didn’t do it alone.“New Yorkers themselves have been our greatest helpers,” the outgoing president of the organization, Cristyne Nicholas, said. “All you have to do is have a tourist open up a map and it’s like seagulls to bread.”That spirit of hospitality has a ripple effect throughout the world. “Tourism is the greatest form of foreign policy,” Ms. Nicholas said.Who enacts this foreign policy? NYC & Company recognized some of the city’s best diplomats at its annual gala earlier this month.One honoree was the impresario of the Union Square Hospitality Group, Danny Meyer, who described the city as a “beautiful, non-combustible, atom chamber.” Without tourists, “it would be a lot easier to commute to fewer restaurants that you would be less interested in going to,” he said.The incoming president of NYC & Company, George Fertitta, also imagined New York without tourists. “We’d be billions of dollars poorer,” he said.Other honorees at the event were the chief executive of Seventh on Sixth, which runs Fashion Week, Fern Mallis, and the Empire State Building, the Bank of America, and the Empire State Building.The event, attended by Tim Zagat, Daniel Doctoroff, and fashion designer Cynthia Steffe, raised $1.2 million.Looking to capture your best moments of 2006? Reprints of the Out & About photographs featuring you or your friends are available online at www.nysun.com/photogallery. Flipping through the albums is also a fun way to review the dresses, jewels, and good looks of the year.Speaking of the end of the year: Thanks for your thousands of smiles, as well as the quips and reflections that have helped capture the fun and good work of New York fund-raisers. The column is on vacation for the next couple of weeks, but I look forward to covering my first gala of 2007 and trust you’ll let me know about the ones on which you’re working. See you in 2007.agordon@nysun.com

Out & About

Out & About

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