Kip Testwuide (Photo provided)

SARANAC LAKE– The Trudeau Institute elected Kip Testwuide, an investment banker and managing member of High Peaks Advisors LLC, as its new board chairman.

Testwuide, of Lake Placid, fills the position left by Dr. Dorothy Federman, who retired as chair in August after serving on Trudeau’s board for 40 years.

Julie North, a partner with law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and Dr. Brian Pollok, co-founder, president and CEO of the biotech company Propagenix Inc., were named co-vice chairs.

Victoria Derbyshire, a public health expert who served as deputy director of the Wadsworth Center in Albany, was also appointed to the board.

“It is a remarkable honor to follow in Dorothy’s footsteps,” said Testwuide, who has served on Trudeau’s board since 2018. “Dorothy has been an unfailing guide and inspiration as Trudeau continues to evolve.

“Under her watch, we’ve grown our commitment to safeguard global health by strengthening our own research initiatives and leveraging those capabilities to work more closely with outside institutions,” he added. “We are all grateful for her vision and long service.”

Federman, who served as Trudeau’s chair since 2019, joined its board in 1981. At the time, she had recently launched her medical career in Saranac Lake and was working alongside Frank Trudeau, the institute’s founding president. When he asked her to join the board, Federman recalled, she wasn’t even sure what a board did. But her experience as a physician, and as the daughter of a scientist, helped her get up to speed quickly.

“I am stepping down at the time of Trudeau’s ascendance,” Federman said. “Trudeau has its feet solidly planted beneath it. Our newer and younger board members ask questions I never thought of asking, and inhabit realms of thought that are crucial to the institute’s ongoing success. They are poised to carry the torch, and it’s time for me to become an ambassador.”

Trudeau President and Director Atsuo Kuki announced that Trudeau would rename its program for early-career researchers the Dorothy J. Federman Postdoctoral Program, and dedicated a terrace in her honor. He praised Federman’s leadership and generosity as she stepped down.

“With her guidance, the Trudeau enterprise has engaged with some of most pressing threats to global health as we preserve, honor, and extend the Trudeau legacy,” Kuki said. “Dorothy has been a direct link from Frank Trudeau and the vibrant heritage of our history, up to the modern challenges of drug-resistant TB and the novel coronavirus.

“We’ve hired new teams of scientists and research technicians who bring their special skills to our unique laboratory,” he added. “We’ve broadened our dedication to the region’s economic vigor and, at the same time to the medical well-being of our North Country community, something brought in clear relief as we partnered with area institutions to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Federman’s successor, Testwuide, has served as Trudeau’s vice-chair since 2019. Testwuide had a 30-year career in investment banking in New York City, most recently as head of the fixed income division of BNP Paribas in the Americas.

He is a member of Point Positive, an angel investor group that cultivates new businesses within the Adirondack Park. He also sits on the boards of the Adirondack Land Trust, the New York State Ski Education Foundation, the University of Wisconsin, College of Letters and Science, and the Beaver Dam Sanctuary. Testwuide lives in Lake Placid.

North, a partner in the litigation department of New York City-based law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, has served on Trudeau’s board since 2013. She has longstanding ties to the institute: Her father, Robert North, was Trudeau’s third director and he remains an honorary trustee. North is a board member for Central City Chorus and Everybody Wins! New York; she also serves on the board of advocates of Human Rights First and the board of legal advisors for Legal Momentum. She lives in New York City.

Pollok is co-founder, president and CEO of Propagenix Inc., a Maryland-based biotechnology firm that specializes in epithelial tissue modeling and cell therapy.

In his 40-year career, Pollok has served on the medical school faculty of Wake Forest University. He has been a biotechnology research and development executive with several Fortune 500 companies and was president of the nation’s oldest non-profit biotech organization. He was the University of Virginia’s first entrepreneur-in-residence, where he launched two biotech start-ups as CEO.

He has served on several nonprofit boards related to biomedical research, including the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the NIH Center for Regenerative Medicine and UCSD’s Dean’s Office. He is an instructor at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UVA and lives in Albemarle County, Virginia.

Derbyshire served 28 years at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, where she was deputy director for seven years.

A native of England, Derbyshire joined Wadsworth in 1992 as an NIH-supported postdoctoral fellow. She holds a doctorate in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University, as well as a patent on the use of inteins to purify proteins. She lives in Slingerlands.