Bank Street College

John Borden has been a member of the Bank Street College community since 2004. He was the chief advancement officer (fundraising, alumni relations, and communications) until 2015, and retired from Bank Street in 2016. Previously, he held similar roles at several universities (Adelphi, Columbia, and Yale) as well as at Teachers College, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He began his working life as a program officer at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Born and bred in Baltimore, where he met his wife Marian, John has lived in Washington, DC, New Haven, and since 1981 in Larchmont and New Rochelle, NY. Marian and he have been blessed with four adult children and five exceptional grandchildren. John has a bachelor’s degree from Franklin & Marshall College and a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University. He sees his work in development as an important component of institution building and felt an immediate connection to the challenges that Jack Niemeyer faced and his approach to building Bank Street into a significant player in public education in the U.S. John enjoys reading history, especially biographies by Scott Berg, Robert Caro, Ron Chernow, Joseph Ellis, and David McCullough. Their impressive work encouraged him to pursue this project on Jack Niemeyer.