Trail Conference Team

Ken Posner

Board Chair

Ken is SVP of Strategic Planning and Investor Relations at Mr. Cooper Group, Inc., the nation’s leading residential mortgage servicer.  He previously was chief of strategic planning and investor relations at and co-founder of Capital Bank, and prior to that he was a senior research analyst at Morgan Stanley. He through-ran the Long Path in 2013, and subsequently organized the SRT Run to promote awareness of the Trail Conference’s activities. A graduate of Yale and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Ken served in the U.S. Army as an infantry officer and was Airborne and Ranger qualified.  He has earned the Certified Public Accountant, Chartered Financial Analyst, and Financial Risk Manager designations.  He has completed the 46 Adirondack High Peaks and the Catskills Grid, set the record for the 292-mile Badwater Double, barefoot thru-hiked the John Muir Trail, and completed 101 races of marathon distance or longer.

David Felsenthal

Board Vice Chair

David has been a member of the Trail Conference and an active hiker in the greater New York area for over 30 years.  David is an attorney and Counsel to the Chairman at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, an agency of the US government.  Before moving to New York, David lived in Taiwan and Switzerland, where he hiked extensively. 

David Togut

Board Director

David Togut recently retired after 14 years as a Senior Managing Director from Evercore ISI, a leading institutional equity business owned by Evercore focused on equity research, sales and trading and equity capital markets.  37 years ago, David began his career in investment research, including 33 years focused on the payments, fintech and IT services industries.  Every year from 1994-2004, David was rated the #1 or #2 equity research analyst in his industry by Institutional Investor Magazine or Greenwich Research Associates.  More than 50 years ago, David began hiking in the Adirondack Mountains, primarily in the Lake Placid and Keene Valley area.  For the past 20 years, David has hosted a summer hiking trip for family and friends to the High Peaks region of the Adirondack Mountains.  David earned his BA from Brown University, his MBA in finance and accounting from Columbia Business School and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.  David lives in Manhattan with his wife and has two sons.

Alan Davidson

Board Director

Alan is the Executive Director of the Kenya Scholar Access Program (KenSAP), a 501(c)(3) non-profit college access and career development program that assists high-achieving, low-income students from Kenya in pursuing higher education opportunities at the best universities in the world. In addition, he is the Board Chair of the Shamiri Institute, an organization that develops and scales accessible mental health interventions for young people across the Global South, a Trustee at the Education For All Children (EFAC) Trust in Kenya, and an Advisor to several other education-related NGOs on the African Continent. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and has a J.D. from Columbia Law School. At dawn, on any given morning, you will find Alan running miles and miles around the dirt roads of the Western Catskills when he’s home or the dirt roads of Kenya when he’s traveling for work. He’s also a trail runner, hiker, bushwhack lover, trail maintainer on the Giant Ledge-Panther-Fox Hollow trail, and the NYNJTC Trail Chair of the Catskills region. 

Kalyan “Kal” Ghosh

Board Director

Kalyan “Kal” Ghosh is a senior programmer/analyst at Fisher Brothers and a graduate of DA College in Calcutta, India, with a degree in mathematics. Kal is an avid hiker, runner, skier, and swimmer. He has volunteered as a maintainer in the Catskills, attended the recent Gala, and participated in the Trail Conference DEI committee.

Emily Hague

Board Director

Emily grew up in the woods of New Hampshire and has worked in the field of land conservation for 15 years. She is currently working to protect some of the Hudson Valley’s most important places as Assistant Director of Land Conservation for Scenic Hudson. Emily has a BS in Environmental Studies from Oberlin College and an MS from Antioch University in Resource Management and Administration. She has served on numerous boards as well as the Keene NH City Council. Off the clock, she can be found working with the Jolly Rovers Trail Crew, playing keyboards, or hiking with her partner and son.

Barbara Evans

Board Director

Barbara Evans is associate executive director, Institutional Advancement & Communication, at The City College of New York. She has extensive philanthropic fundraising and event management experience, including four years as a development officer at Appalachian Mountain Club. An avid hiker and trail runner, she recently completed section-hiking the Long Path. Barbara has participated in the Trail Conference Board Development Committee.

Charles Gadol

Board Secretary

Charlie is an experienced pathologist, recently retired after having worked in the field since 1988.  A 1979 graduate of Yale College, and a 1984 graduate of UMDNJ New Jersey Medical School, Charlie has also completed a degree in English at Rutgers and a masters in writing and literature at Bennington.  An avid hiker and trail runner, Charlie is race director for two popular trail races in the Catskills, the 54-mile Manitou’s Revenge Ultramarathon, and the Cat’s Tail Trail Marathon, and directs two fundraiser races to raise money for the Trail Conference including the Sterling Furnace Races and the Pocantico Hill Marathon. Charlie is the Catskill Long Path Trail Chair and serves on the Board of Run Wild, Inc.  He is a resident of New Paltz, N.Y. He serves as co-chair on the Advancement Committee, chair of the Policy Council, and serves on the Nominating and Strategic Planning committee.

Felicity Arengo

Board Director

Felicity is a conservation biologist with MS and PhD degrees from the SUNY-College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Until recently, she was the Associate Director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, serving in that position since 2004. From 1997-2004 she was the Assistant Director of Latin America and the Caribbean at the Wildlife Conservation Society. She is currently working with partners in South America, monitoring flamingo populations and wetland habitats to develop and implement a long-term regional conservation strategy. She is also an Adjunct Research Scientist at Columbia University where she teaches in the Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology department. Felicity is an avid hiker, swimmer, and cyclist, and has been a trail maintainer since 2019.

Juan Melli

Board Director

Juan is a Managing Director at the global public strategy firm Mercury specializing in government relations and strategic communications. A first-generation immigrant from Argentina, he is an active hiker, backpacker, and photographer. Juan has been a Trail Conference volunteer maintainer of the Appalachian Trail in Worthington State Forest and serves on the board of Team Wilderness, a non-profit that empowers urban youth through wilderness experiences. He graduated from Rutgers University and earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. Juan lives in Hoboken with his wife and two boys.

Michael Pashley

Board Director

Michael is a Cambridge University, UK physics PhD and retired corporate researcher with a long career at Philips in North America as a senior research investigator and a department head in their North American research lab. He is an active hiker throughout the UK, US, the Alps, Canadian Rockies, and New Zealand. He is a Trail Conference volunteer sawyer, AT corridor monitor, assistant AT supervisor, co-lead of the Westchester Trail Tramps Crew, and East Hudson RTC chair. Recently he utilized his IT/software skills to develop the new online hours reporting system which the Trail Conference is now rolling out.

Sara Kleinberg

Board Director

Sara is a Senior Director at Google, specializing in User Experience. Sara holds an M.B.A. in Marketing from the Wharton School and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. She was previously active with Girls on the Run and served on the board of the Discover Outdoors Foundation, a non-profit that connected city youth with the outdoors. Sara is an avid hiker who’s summited Mt. Kilimanjaro and Yosemite’s Half Dome. While she’s hiked around the world (Alps, Patagonia, Dolomites, New Zealand), she has a soft spot for the Catskills. Sara lives in New York City and can often be found running the trails in Central Park. 

Seth Reichlin

Board Director

Seth is an avid hiker, mountain biker, road biker, skier, paddler, classical pianist, and chamber musician.  He works with the Trail Conference to build new trails at Sterling Forest, and on strategy, fundraising, and digital marketing.  Seth is also Chair of Palisades MTB, a non-profit that builds and maintains multi-use trails in Bergen, Orange, and Rockland Counties; advocates for sustainable mountain bike access on public land; and educates riders on trail etiquette.

After retiring as an executive at Pearson Education, Seth co-founded CollegeAPP, a company that uses databases and machine learning to help colleges find and recruit adult students.  He lives in Nyack, New York.

Mary Ann Villari

Board Treasurer

Mary Ann is a life-long hiker, skier and fledgling gardener.  Mary Ann holds a BA from Bowdoin College and a JD from Boston University Law School.  After practicing corporate real estate law for many years in New York City, Mary Ann served as Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel for Broadway Housing Communities, a not-for-profit organization that provides supportive and affordable housing for low-income and formerly homeless adults and families.   Over two decades, she led the development of hundreds of units of housing, two early childhood centers and a new cultural institution, including the Sugar Hill Project in Washington Heights.  Mary Ann served on the Board of Trustees of Bowdoin College and is currently a member of the Finance and Governance Committees of the Trail Conference.

Sreeni Nair

Board Director

Sreeni Nair lives in Mercer County, N.J. He has been an avid hiker all his life— first, in the mountains of India, and later in the States. He got introduced to the Trail Conference through the Trail Conference’s group hikes. Sreeni is also a well-known runner in the local community, where he has used his running fame to raise money for numerous causes. Professionally, he works for Bank of America. Sreeni is a member of the Trail Conference Strategic Planning Committee.

Todd Finger

Board Director

Todd Finger is a corporate partner in the New York office of McDermott Will & Schulte, an international law firm.  Todd is a Trail Conference volunteer maintainer in Westchester County and is a supervisor in Harriman State Park.  He is an avid hiker and kayaker.   Todd earned his B.B.A. from Emory University and his J.D. from New York University School of Law.