School of Business receives lead gift of $100,000 to finance new trading room

NEW PALTZ — The School of Business will hold a press conference at 10 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 19 in van den Berg Hall to announce the opening of the Kenneth D. Pasternak Trading Room.

The Pasternak Family Foundation has donated a lead gift of $100,000 to equip and finance an accounting research facility with the goal of turning the facility into a fully functioning trading room and state of the art multimedia library, located in the newly renovated van den Berg Hall.

Hadi Salavitabar, dean of the School of Business, said that opening a trading and research facility has long been a priority of the School of Business. To that end, members of the regional business and philanthropic community, acting through the school’s volunteer Business Advisory Council, have been collaborating with the school to bring about the new program.

College President Steven Poskanzer said, “Ken Pasternak is a shining example of the horizons that can open up for a student with a New Paltz education. He has been wonderfully supportive of his alma mater, and this most generous gift from the Pasternak Family Foundation will help us make it possible for a next generation of students to learn about trading and finance in the most effective of ways."

Salavitabar added that the program’s objectives are to give hands-on, real-time trading room experience to students; increase research collaboration between faculty and students by adding important new databases; create new undergraduate and graduate courses; and provide faculty with the technology and financial data to expand their research and publication activities.

Pasternak, who graduated from New Paltz in 1977 with a degree in Secondary Education and a concentration in Social Studies, is chairman and founder of Chestnut Ridge Capital, a private hedge fund. He also is chairman and co-founder of International Medical Resources, a nursing recruitment specialist in the U.S. that also has offices in the Philippines and India.

Pasternak is past chairman, CEO and co-founder of Knight Capital Group, a Fortune 1000 company in Manhattan that had a market value of more than $5 billon dollars in 1999. In 1999, Pasternak received the Ernst and Young National Entrepreneur Championship Award.

Pasternak’s past memberships have included the Board of Governors for NASDAQ and NASD and he joined the New Paltz Foundation Board in 2006.