Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens

Irfan M. Furniturewala (an Encino resident), Erika Aronson Stern (a Malibu resident), Charles J. McFadden (resident of Westlake Village), Brian Diamond (a Valley Village resident), and Rajath Shourie (a Pacific Palisades resident) have been appointed to the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association's (GLAZA) Board of Trustees for their first 3-year terms, it was announced by GLAZA President Connie Morgan.  Actress Betty White and businessman Richard Lichtenstein co-chair GLAZA's 36-member Board of Trustees.

“These five distinguished individuals are deeply committed to our continued success,” says Morgan, "and we welcome them to the board with confidence that GLAZA will benefit from their outstanding leadership.”

For nearly five decades, the private, non-profit Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association (GLAZA), founded in 1963, has funded exhibits, plant and animal species conservation, capital projects, and education and community outreach programs at the Los Angeles Zoo, an international leader in the preservation of endangered species and a conservation center for the care and study of wildlife.  GLAZA also builds and invests endowment funds and operates five essential departments on behalf of the Zoo, including development, publications, membership, volunteers and oversight of the Zoo's food/retail concessions.  There are currently 73,000 GLAZA member households representing more than 300,000 adults and children, the largest membership base of a cultural organization in Los Angeles, and a volunteer corps of over 700.

ENCINO resident Irfan M. Furniturewala is a senior vice president and co-research portfolio coordinator of U.S. equities for The Capital Group Companies with research responsibilities for semiconductors and hardware companies, as well as an emerging markets investment analyst with research responsibilities covering the technology industry in India.  Prior to joining The Capital Group as an analyst in 2001, he spent five years at Motorola, Inc. as a senior design engineer.  During his time at Motorola, he also founded Proventure Trading.  He is the co-inventor of two engineering patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Furniturewala earned an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business, an MS in electrical engineering from Iowa State University, and a BS in electronics engineering from Bombay University.

MALIBU resident Erika Aronson Stern serves as executive director of The EGL Charitable Foundation in New York, where she advises multi-generational family office on philanthropic activities, synthesizes Trustee’s’ philanthropic goals and the Foundation’s financial objectives, works to improve the Foundation’s complex structures and navigate the Foundation through a decade of changes in philanthropic oversight, and develops innovative programs.  Prior to that, she was an associate at O’MELVENY & MYERS, LLP in New York.  She has a J.D. from Columbia Law School and a B.A. from Trinity College in Hartford, CT.  She currently serves on the board of The Rippowam Cisqua School in Bedford, NY, and she was a board member of The JCC in Manhattan.

VALLEY VILLAGE resident Brian Diamond is president of Diamond Landscaping, Inc., a full-service landscape installation firm which he founded in 1990 after studying landscape architecture at UCLA.  His interest in the landscape installation profession began while a high school student of architecture, and he was licensed by the State of California in 1994 as a landscape contractor and appointed by Governor Gray Davis to the Landscape Architect Technical Committee.  Diamond Landscaping's public projects include the Tree People Water Demonstration Garden, SRO Housing Drop in Center, MTA Acton Station and Parking Lot and Kenter School Library Garden, and the firm has constructed gardens for many private residences.

WESTLAKE VILLAGE resident Charles J. McFadden began his career in 1983 with Goldman Sachs and Co. in New York, where he was a manager of the Operations Control Department for the New York Institutional and Private Client Sales Group.  While at Goldman Sachs, he earned his MBA in International Economics at Pace University, New York.  In 1987, he was recruited to Prudential-Bache Securities as vice president, International Operations.  He served as general manager of Prudential-Bache Securities Australia, Ltd. (PBSA), first vice-president for the International Division of Prudential Securities Private Client Group in London, director of administration of Prudential Securities International Division in New York, with added responsibilities as the director of administration for Prudential’s Commodities Division, and first vice president and manager of Prudential’s Walnut Creek Private Client office in the San Francisco area.  He was named to Prudential’s Branch Manager Advisory Council in 2000, which is awarded to the top 35 branch managers out of 200 branch managers within the domestic private client retail network.  In 2001, he was also given responsibility for the Palo Alto, California office.  Additionally, he was named to Prudential’s Executive Branch Manager Advisory Council, which is awarded to the top twelve branch managers in the firm.  He was asked to relocate back to the New York Metropolitan area, and accepted the position as first vice president and manager of the Paramus, New Jersey private client office, now owned by Wachovia Securities due the merger between Wachovia and Prudential in July 2003.  In November, 2004, he moved to Merrill Lynch as an associate director in the Paramus, NJ Complex.  Two years later, he became director of the Merrill Lynch Valley Coast Complex, and in November 2009, he was promoted to director of the Merrill Lynch/Bank of America Los Angeles Complex.

PACIFIC PALISADES resident Rajath Shourie is a managing director at Oaktree Capital Management and co-portfolio manager of the firm's flagship distressed debt funds.  He joined Oaktree in 2002, after having worked in the Principal Investment Area at Goldman Sachs and as a management consultant at McKinsey.  At Oaktree, he has made both control and non-control investments in distressed debt across a variety of sectors.  He has invested in the aircraft industry for a number of years, and has more recently spent the majority of his time investing in financial institutions and real estate.  Shourie has been active on a number of creditors' committees, and served on the steering committee in the restructuring of commercial lender CIT Group.  He is a board member of homebuilder Taylor Morrison, aircraft lessor Jackson Square Aviation, and specialty REIT Store Capital.  Shourie holds a B.A. degree in Economics from Harvard College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.  He then went on to receive an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar.

To support the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association or for more information about its work, please call 323-644-4701.