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Farewell Mills Gatsch Architects, currently celebrating its 35th year in practice, recently announced the promotion of staff members Meredith Arms Bzdak and Christa J. Gaffigan. Ms. Bzdak, who was the firm’s Architectural Historian and Director of Business Development, has been promoted to Senior Associate. Her projects have included documentation of Louis Kahn’s Bath House and Day Camp in Trenton; a cultural resource survey for Princeton University; and the nomination of the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank to the National Register of Historic Places. She is a Part-Time Lecturer at Rutgers University in the Art History Department, where she teaches classes on the development of the modern city and the preservation of the recent past. Ms. Gaffigan, who was promoted to Associate, has helped to implement many of Farewell Mills Gatsch’s new design and preservation projects, including the Machold Residence on Lake Carnegie in Princeton.

Princeton Resident Stanley Cohen, longtime chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, has assumed the top post at the American Society for Investigative Pathology, one of the largest professional societies representing experimental and investigative pathologists. As president of the Bethesda, Maryland-based organization, Mr. Cohen is expected to bring attention to, and promote, the convergence of the fields of pathology and radiology toward an integrated diagnostic discipline. Mr. Cohen was also recently tapped by the Center for Scientific Review at the National Institutes of Health to participate on a Distinguished Editorial Panel to review NIH Challenge Grants in Health and Science Research as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. An avid photographer, Mr. Cohen resides in Princeton with his wife, Marion Cohen, an immunologist at UMDNJ-NJMS. They have three children: daughter Laurie, a pediatric neuroendocrinologist; and sons Ron, an endocrinologist, and Ken, an oncologist; and nine grandchildren. 

The Mercer Regional Chamber of Commerce recently announced that its president and CEO, Michele Siekerka, has been selected by the American Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE) to participate in the association’s Regional Sustainable Development (RSD) Fellowship program, funded by the Ford Foundation. Ms. Siekerka is among the 32 business and civic leaders from around the nation who were selected for the program. “Spurring regional, sustainable development is one of the major issues facing civic organizations, especially chambers of commerce, in the 21st century,” said ACCE President Mick Fleming. Mercer Regional Chamber of Commerce Chairman Jeff Perlman noted that “the value of this program is second to none, particularly in light of the Chamber’s newly-formed Economic Development Foundation; we are proud and delighted to have Michele Siekerka participate.”

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