2025 NYC IDEAS Lunch with Paula Volent & Jennifer Prosek: Managing Stakeholder Relations

Jen Prosek

Founder & CEO, Prosek Partners

Jennifer Prosek is the founder and Managing Partner of Prosek Partners, a leading international public relations and financial communications consultancy with offices in New York, London, Boston, Los Angeles, and Connecticut. The firm ranks among the top financial communications consultancies in the U.S. and UK. Prosek Partners was named among Forbes’ America’s Best PR Agencies in 2021, has been listed as an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company for nine years running, and is ranked among the Top 25 firms in New York Observer’s PR Power List. Jennifer was also listed personally among Insider’s list of top financial communicators in the United States.

Jennifer is a published author and frequent speaker. "Army of Entrepreneurs," her first book, received praise from Columbia Business School, Wharton and INSEAD. Her second book "Raising Can-Do Kids," co-authored with Richard Rende, Ph.D., was published by Penguin Random House in 2015. She is on the board of directors of the Arthur Page Society, BritishAmerican Business, Nasdaq-listed Better World Acquisition Corporation, and sits on the advisory board of Signal AI and iConnections. She is also a venture investor in a number of communications technology platforms, including Qwoted and The Marque.

Jennifer received her MBA from Columbia University and a B.A. in English Literature from Miami University.

Brian Schaffer

Partner, Prosek Partners

Brian Schaffer has 25 years of special situations experience providing corporate, transaction, crisis and investor communications counsel to senior management teams and boards of directors. He has helped position numerous M&A transactions, hostile takeover attempts, proxy contests (operating companies and funds), corporate and sovereign bankruptcies and restructurings, asset divestitures and public company listings.

Prior to joining Prosek in 2007, Brian was Director of Investor Relations at ntl, Inc. He was also Vice President of Investor Relations at Brainerd Communicators. Brian started his career at Morgen-Walke Associates after graduating with Honors from the University of Delaware.

Paula Volent

Vice President and CIO, The Rockefeller University

Paula Volent is Vice President and Chief Investment Officer at The Rockefeller University, the world’s leading biomedical research university. Prior to joining The Rockefeller University in August 2021. Ms. Volent served as Chief Investment Officer and Senior Vice President at Bowdoin College, a private, residential college in Brunswick, Maine. At Bowdoin, where she was responsible for the oversight and management of the College’s endowment. Prior to joining Bowdoin in July 2000, Ms. Volent was a Senior Associate at the Yale Investments Office.

Ms. Volent has a BA from the University of New Hampshire; a Master’s Degree in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University; a Certificate in Conservation from the Conservation Center at NYU, with a specialization in the conservation of works of art on paper; and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. Prior to focusing on endowment management, Paula worked as a paper conservator at the New-York Historical Society, the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts, the LA County Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. She also ran a private paper conservation studio in Los Angeles, California.

She serves on the Board of Directors of MSCI, Inc.; the Board of Directors of 1st Dibs; a member of the Investment Committee of the Pritzker Family Foundation, a member of the Advisory Board of Girls Who Invest, a Trustee of the Skowhegan School of Art and Painting, and an Investment Committee Member of the Rockefeller Foundation. She is also Vice Chair of the Yale School of Management Advisory Board, a member of the Milken Institute’s Global Markets Advisory Council, a member of the Advisory Board of the Private Capital Research Institute and a member of the National Gallery of Art Investment Subcommittee. In 2020 Barron’s named Ms. Volent as one of the “100 most influential women in U.S. Finance.