Martin Steven Cohen – 50th Reunion Essay

Martin Steven Cohen

111 South Drive

New Hyde Park, NY 11040

martycohen36@hotmail.com

917-922-8870

Spouse(s): Mindy Aloff (1968-2000); Randy Ellen Sheinberg (2005)

Child(ren): Ariel Nikiya Cohen (1985); Paola Ayelet Sheinberg Cohen (2006)

Education: Yale, BA (1969); SUNY Buffalo, MA (1972), PhD (1975); Yale School of Management, MBA (1983)

Career: Director, Portland Poetry Festival (8 years); Director, NYC Family & Adult Services (3 yr); SVP, Work in America Institute (12 years); Director, Mid-Markets, The Conference Board (12 years); Teacher (various, 12 years); Writer (life–)

Avocations: “Only where love and need are one/And the work is play for mortal stakes”

College: Pierson

“Start where you are.”

Elevator speech I: I retired in 2015 with six goals: (1) get into better shape, (2) be more involved with my daughter’s education, (3) volunteer one day a week, (4) study piano, (5) get a couple of older manuscripts out the door, and (6) write new stuff. I’m working on all six and am busier than I was when people paid me.

Elevator speech II: Thirty-five years in nonprofits (arts management; social services; labor-management teamwork; productivity research). Eight years in government (Portland, Oregon: education policy; State and City of New York: homeless services, transportation). Thirteen years teaching writing and literature at colleges, prisons, elementary and high schools, and as a Poet in the Schools. Twenty years in Human Resources. Fifty-five years writing.

You’re ready to get off the elevator because the numbers don’t add up, or you believe my career makes no sense.

It hangs together the way it always has: everything I’ve done derives from my being a writer with good math skills. Learned to write in high school; learned bookkeeping from my dad’s wholesale business. Yale College (and later Yale SOM) gave me more tools and credibility.

I remain an introvert with a tropism toward the microphone. (I loved Dramat and yes cut a few classes working on productions.) I’ve hosted hundreds of conferences, site visits, poetry readings, and symposia; interviewed CEOs, economists, HR leaders, poets, and painters; recorded podcasts. My publications include A Traveller’s Alphabet (poetry), The Conference Board CEO Challenge: Mid-Markets (applied economics), and a series of 100 essays on Jewish American and Yiddish poetry.

I was serving on some task force on public arts when I blurted out, “We have to stand up for the alternative, the dinky organizations, as well as major symphonies and museums.” It was in that spirit that for over a decade I led the Conference Board’s programs for smaller companies.

I got married to writer Mindy Aloff in 1968; we were divorced in 2000. Our daughter Ariel was born in Brooklyn in 1985. Ariel teaches reading in Oakland, after stints in Harlem and Mexico.

I was leading a productivity roundtable in Arizona when I met Randy Ellen Sheinberg (TD ’81; SOM ’87), an organizational change leader at Cummins Engine; we took a side trip to visit one of our Yale professors and see a meteor shower. Randy became a rabbi, and I became single; we reconnected and got married. We brought our daughter Paola home from Guatemala in 2006.

In 2017 Ariel married fellow teacher Louis Orren. They had met as counselors at a camp for special needs children. Randy performed the ceremony; Paola was a bridesmaid.

I might have had more impact if I had focused on a single goal. But I’m proud of what I’ve done at almost every job I’ve had, and I’ve enjoyed almost every step I’ve taken on the zigzag walk that started in Kansas City and continued alongside you on Old Campus.