Board of Trustees

Alexis Kashar, President

Alexis Ander Kashar, our first woman President, is a civil rights attorney and entrepreneur with a focus on design, sports and technology. Growing up in a multi-generational Deaf family, her parents' activism inspired a lifelong commitment to civil rights.

As a Presidential appointee to the United States Access Board, Alexis works to advance access for people with disabilities through design standards and federal guidelines. She has also been instrumental in the integration of ASL into iconic cultural events including the Super Bowl, helping to elevate Deaf and Hard of Hearing talent on a global scale. She is also the founder of Love Sign by RoseBYANDER.

A proud Texas Longhorn alumna, Kashar holds degrees from the University of Texas School of Business and School of Law and resides in New York.

Adam Stone, Ph. D., Vice President

Adam Stone, Ph.D. is an analytics engineer and data scientist. He has worked at tech companies and data consultancies including Convo, Deliveroo, Netlify, and currently, Brooklyn Data Co. He is a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology, University of California San Diego, and earned his doctorate in Educational Neuroscience at Gallaudet University.

Prior to his doctorate studies, Dr. Stone was a kindergarten and first grade teacher at P.S. 347 The ASL & English Lower School in Manhattan. He joined the Board of Trustees in 2024 after serving as a Governor at Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children in London, UK from 2019 to 2024. Adam, who is deaf, is originally from Del Mar, CA and now lives in Manhattan with his husband, Jordan.

Linda Bove, Vice President

Linda is a professional actor/ASL consultant for Theatre/TV/films and certified deaf interpreter. A founding member of the Deaf West Theatre, she lives in Phoenix, AZ with her husband, Ed Waterstreet, Founder and first Artistic Director of DWT( retired).

She has been an active board member of NYSD since 1991. Her passion is about rights for deaf children in education and for traveling/exploring the world.

Duane Halliburton, Treasurer

Duane Haliburton is a provisional financial marketing director in Maryland where he is responsible for guiding clients to achieve short-term and long- term objectives for investments, insurance, business, and estate planning. His business philosophy is to transform and sustain underprivileged communities to live a better life through financial literacy and social empowerment. He is CFO of Bingham Halliburton, LLC., a commercial and residential property management firm.

Mr. Halliburton holds an B.S. from Gallaudet University, Master of Science in Telecommunications and Computers from George Washington University and an Executive J.D. from Purdue University. His background in the technology sector spans over 20 years of innovation development and integration of network management systems for government agencies.

Tom L. Humphries, Ph.D, Secretary

Dr. Humphries is an American academic, author, and lecturer on Deaf culture and communication. Humphries is a Professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Humphries earned his Ph.D. in Cross Cultural Communication and Language Learning at Union Graduate School in 1977. Humphries is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the San Diego branch of the University of California. In addition to teaching at UCSD, he has been developing an experimental curriculum for teaching deaf children by applying bilingual teaching practices.

Shane Grant

Shane Grant is the Group Deputy CEO, CEO Americas, and EVP of Dairy, Plant-Based and
Global Sales for Danone, a leading global food, beverage and nutrition company. In this role, he oversees the North America and Latin America zones, is responsible for the Global Dairy and Plant-Based category, as well as Global Customer & Commercial Leadership.
Shane leads a passionate team of 25,000 Danoners across the world to advance Danone’s
mission of bringing health through food to as many people as possible. Danone has market-leading positions in yogurt, plant-based food and beverage, premium dairy, water, coffee and specialized nutrition. The company is also one of the world’s largest certified B Corps. In the U.S key brands include Oikos, Dannon, Light & Fit, Activia, Silk, So Delicious, International Delight, SToK, evian, Happy Family Organics, Nutricia and others.

Before joining Danone, Shane spent almost 20 years with The Coca-Cola Company, where he held various leadership roles of increasing scale in category leadership, commercial and general management before being appointed President of the Still Beverages business unit for Coca-Cola North America. Early in his Coca-Cola career, Shane also held brand and category leadership roles across Australia and New Zealand.

Before joining Coca-Cola, Shane worked for Unilever, where he held customer leadership, supply chain and brand management positions. Shane is a native of New Zealand and holds Business and Arts degrees from the University of
Auckland. He has lived in North America since 2005. Shane is on the Boards of lululemon (S&P: lulu), the Consumer Brands Association and the US Food Industry Association (FMI). Shane is also a Member of the American Heart Association CEO Roundtable and World 50.

Denise Kavin, Ed.D.

Denise Kavin has been with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID), a college of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, New York for over twenty years. She is a full-time faculty member with the Department of Liberal Studies, where she teaches courses and coordinates their AS program in Applied Liberal Arts, and the BS program in Community Development and Inclusive Leadership.

Prior to that, Denise served for several years as Assistant Dean for Outreach, Placement and Special Projects and co-principal investigator with DeafTEC: Technological Education Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students, a National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education National Center of Excellence. In her position as Dean, she provided oversight for the Pre-College Outreach department, Co-op and Career Center, Project Fast Forward, and the Regional STEM Outreach Center (NRSC), a partnership with the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind.

Previous positions that Denise has held at NTID include Special Assistant to the NTID President for Strategic Decisions 2020 and Study Abroad Programming; Associate Director, Postsecondary Education Programs Network- Northeast; Senior Project Associate, Postsecondary Education Network-International; and Employment Advisor, Center on Employment. She also served for nearly ten years as Coordinator of Deaf/ hard of hearing services at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois.

Denise Kavin holds an Ed.D. in Leadership and Educational Policy Studies from Northern Illinois University, a M.S. in Education and Social Policy from Northwestern University, a M.S. in Secondary education of the Deaf, from NTID/RIT, and a B.A. in Communication Arts and Psychology from Gallaudet University. She also holds certification from the Training Program on Administration of Programs serving Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Late Deafened Adults at San Diego State University.

Dr. Raja Kushalnagar

Dr. Kushalnagar is a teacher, researcher and advocate for more inclusion of deaf and hard of hearing people in daily life through advances in accessible technology, human rights and legal policy. He is the Director of the Information Technology Program at Gallaudet University. He has a J.D. from Thurgood Marshall School of Law, an LL.M. in Intellectual property and Information Law from the University of Houston Law School, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science, focused on accessible computing, from the University of Houston.

He has published over 30 papers and directed several grants related to accessible computing, human rights, disability law and intellectual property law. His findings in how people with sensory differences perceive and use devices and programs has led to design guidelines to make products more inclusive. For instance, deaf learners prefer few lines of speech-to-text (captions) in video lectures, while hearing learners prefer many lines of speech-to-text (transcript) next to the video lecture. He also advocates for updates in accessibility and intellectual property law to keep up with accessible computing advances, e.g., who owns captions obtained from automatic speech recognition.

Senator Suzi Oppenheimer

Senator Suzi Oppenheimer retired from the NYS Senate in 2013 after serving for 28 years, part of the time as Chair of the Senate Committee on Education. Prior to that she was Mayor of Mamaroneck for 8 years. Today Suzi serves on many philanthropic Boards committed to education policy, the environment and women/family issues.
She graduated with a BS from Connecticut College and an MBA from Columbia University. Suzi and her husband Martin have 4 children and 8 grandchildren. 16 members of their family are deaf. Suzi has been a NYSD trustee since 2013.

Stephen F. (Steve) Weiner

Dr. Steve Weiner retired from Gallaudet University in the summer of 2018 where he served as Provost. Steve, who is deaf, is the son of deaf parents. He attended Fanwood from 1964 to 1968. He became a NYSD Trustee in 2008. Besides being in higher education for most of his professional career, Dr. Weiner has been involved in the deaf and disability rights movement since the 1970s, promoting equal access for everyone. Steve and his wife, Dr. Tammy Weiner, a professor of Psychology, have two grown children who have flown the coop. They live in Maryland but his heart is always in Brooklyn.