The Leadership Team

Jean B. Weinberg, Co-Founder, Jack's Tomorrow

Jean Weinberg began her career at CNN and has spanned various roles in communications from politics to public health. Prior to joining Bloomberg Philanthropies, she served as Chief Communications Officer for the New York City Housing Authority. In this role, she oversaw all resident, employee, and external communications. Ms. Weinberg previously served as Director of Public Affairs for the New York City Department of Health. During her tenure at the Health Department, she led the City’s media response for several major events including Hurricane Sandy, the City’s first Ebola case, and multiple Hepatitis A outbreaks. Before joining the Health Department, she worked in corporate communications for General Electric (GE). Prior to GE, Ms. Weinberg served in the Obama Administration as Press Secretary for the White House Office of Management and Budget. Earlier, Ms. Weinberg worked on Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign as the Regional Press Secretary in Missouri.

Ms. Weinberg earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government from Georgetown University.

Kyle Czepiel, Co-Founder, Jack's Tomorrow 

Kyle is currently a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs where he heads sales for the Global Prime Clearing business.  Prior to assuming his current role, Kyle was the CEO of Goldman Sachs Execution & Clearing.  Kyle joined Goldman Sachs in 2000 upon their acquisition of Spear, Leeds & Kellogg.  

Raph Posner

Raph serves as General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer (GC/CCO) at Antara. Prior to Antara, Raph spent five years as the General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer & Legal Analyst at Warlander Asset Management, a credit hedge fund, where he was the sole in-house lawyer responsible for all legal and regulatory matters within the firm and responsible for assisting the firm in evaluating legal and regulatory risk related to prospective and existing investments. Prior to Warlander, Raph spent nearly eight years at MatlinPatterson Global Advisers, in a variety of legal roles. At MatlinPatterson, Raph was personally responsible for overseeing all legal and regulatory matters related to the firm’s private equity portfolio companies. Prior to MatlinPatterson, Raph was an associate with the law firm Bracewell LLP and prior to that began his legal career as an associate with the law firm Hawkins, Delafield & Wood LLP. Raph earned a Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University and a Juris Doctorate from The Georgetown University Law Center. He has worked with Trinity School and Caring Kind NYC on development efforts.

Adam Capon

Adam resides in Westchester, New York, with his wife, Judy, and their two children, Samantha and Zachary.

With a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Adam's career has taken him through the dynamic worlds of traditional finance and financial technology startups.

He began by serving in Prime Brokerage operations and later became a Specialist on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, trading equities. His journey includes leadership roles in several early-stage financial technology startups, where his operational expertise and team-building skills have been instrumental in their growth and success.

Beyond his professional pursuits, Adam has dedicated numerous years to coaching youth soccer and ice hockey.

Dr. Dan Ackerman

Dan Ackerman is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in genetics from University College London and completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied metabolic features of cancer cells. At his current position, he is part of a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and scientists dedicated to meeting urgent clinical needs in the field of liver cancer. His current research is focused on developing cancer models and experimental systems that represent the complexity and diversity of human disease and on identifying biomarkers that can be used for treatment selection.

Andrea Foote

PhD Candidate at University of Vermont   

Andrea Foote is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine. She studies PUR protein biochemistry including structure, function and molecular physiology. She was awarded the Early Career Research Award by the Cardiovascular Research Institute of Vermont in 2020. She previously investigated osteoarthritis and tissue regeneration at Tufts University School of Medicine and conducted clinical experiments at the University of Utah Immunodermatology Laboratory diagnosing autoimmune skin diseases. Her current research focuses on characterizing the effects of PURB loss-of-function, identifying PURA/B target genes, and deciphering PURA/B transcriptional regulatory mechanisms.

Dr. Zachary Grinspan

Dr. Zachary Grinspan is Associate Professor in Pediatrics and in Population Health Sciences, Interim Chief of Child Neurology, and Director of Pediatric Epilepsy at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, with board certifications in child neurology and epilepsy. His training includes a degree in biostatistics and a completed postdoctoral fellowship in quality of care and medical informatics. His published research draws from multiple disciplines (epilepsy, emergency medicine, critical care, health services research, informatics, biostatistics, machine learning, economics, epidemiology). Dr. Grinspan leads several multi-institutional research initiatives, including the Pediatric Epilepsy Learning Healthcare System and the Rare Epilepsies in New York City consortium. He also leads pilot clinical trials to test already-FDA-approved medications for use in rare genetic epilepsies.

Dr. Devorah Segal

Dr. Devorah Segal is a pediatric neurologist and neuro-oncologist at NYU Langone. Dr. Segal earned her MD and PhD in Neuroscience at Icahn Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She completed her pediatrics and pediatric neurology training at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and then completed a fellowship in Pediatric Neuro-Oncology at NYU Langone Medical Center. She spent several years practicing general child neurology and neurogenetics at Weill Cornell, including co-running a research neurogenetics clinics.  She is now a faculty member at NYU Langone and associate director of the Neurofibromatosis Center. She specializes in neurofibromatosis and pediatric neuro-oncology with an additional focus on rare neurogenetic disorders. She leads several clinical trials treating NF and other genetic disorders with neurologic components.

Andrew Steinsapir, MBA

Andrew Steinsapir is a Director, Gene Therapy Program Lead, Deerfield Discovery and Development, and joined Deerfield in 2021. Mr. Steinsapir serves as Acting Chief Technology Officer for Apertura Gene Therapy, a Deerfield portfolio company. Prior to Deerfield, Mr. Steinsapir was a Consultant for over three years at Dark Horse Consulting Group, where he provided strategic and tactical support for more than 30 cell and gene therapy firms, pharma, and investment firms. Previous to Dark Horse, Mr. Steinsapir worked at 4D Molecular Therapeutics, in several research and process development roles. Mr. Steinsapir holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering with an emphasis on Biotechnology and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Robyn Sussman

Dr. Robyn Sussman received a PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from Thomas Jefferson University in 2013, where she studied how epigenetic control of transcription regulates the cell-fate decisions of pluripotent embryonic stem cells. She went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia where she focused on using genomics to discover new immunotherapy targets for pediatric cancer and the pre-clinical development of immunotherapies born out of that pipeline. She then spent 5 years at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania overseeing the development of clinical genetic and genomic diagnostic assays. She is currently the Senior Manager of Diagnostic Development at Haystack Oncology.

Dr. Kimara Targoff

Dr. Kimara Targoff is a physician-scientist aiming to utilize her knowledge of clinical relevance in Pediatric Cardiology and her proficiency in developmental genetics to address fundamental questions about the etiologies of congenital heart defects.  By using the zebrafish model, they discovered a prominent role for Nkx genes in maintaining ventricular identity.  The findings suggest that molecular mechanisms are necessary both to specify ventricular fate at early developmental stages and to preserve chamber-specific characteristics as morphogenesis proceeds.  They are currently performing a systematic dissection of the molecular, cellular, and temporal mechanisms regulated by Nkx genes during cardiac embryogenesis.  Furthermore, they're investigating the requirement of Nkx genes for cardiomyocyte regeneration in the adult zebrafish ventricle.  Finally, they've generated dozens of mutants using CRISPR genome editing technology to study novel targets of Nkx transcription factors identified by our RNA-Seq experiments in the zebrafish embryo.  She intends to translate insights from this work back to the fetal, neonatal, and pediatric patients with congenital heart defects for risk stratification and improvement of prognosis and also to the adult patients in need of ventricular cardiomyocyte regeneration.