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Bios

Board

Dan Goncharoff is a consultant on financial exchanges and risk. He grew up in Fort Greene, Brooklyn and attended Stuyvesant High School and Yale. He worked for Goldman Sachs for 13 years, where he developed their first risk monitoring process, and became the youngest VP in the firm's history.  He ended up in Europe, where he stayed for most of the next two decades, living in London, England and Frankfurt, Germany, two cities with identities closely tied to their river locations. His consulting work for Deutsche Boerse, the largest exchange company in the world, has taken him to locations such as Paris, Madrid and Dubai.  Dan is working on PortSide event planning and funding research and serves as Pursar.

Carolina Salguero, PortSide Founder and Director. She began life in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn and spent her teen years in New England, often on the coast.  She graduated magna cum laude from Yale with two majors (Art and American Studies). The social policy studies from the latter informed her journalism and ultimately PortSide.  She worked around the world as a freelance documentary photographer and writer from the opening of the Berlin Wall through 9/11 where she arrived at ground zero by boat.  Since 1998, she has been researching, documenting, boating and advocating on behalf of New York City's waterfront. In 2002, she completed a two and a half year project on NYC tugboats for National Geographic which introduced her to the port.  In 2003, she launched the first interactive community board website in NYC for Brooklyn Community Board 6. The site covered the "Piers 6-12 Study" and issues pertaining city plans for the Red Hook Containerport from 2003 until 2005.  Salguero has a "six pack" captain's license and offers harbor tours on her 26' powerboat.  She supervised the haul-out of the Mary A. Whalen winter 2007 during which the hull was blasted, painted and repaired, and two spudwells were installed.  She comes from a maritime family: Her uncle Ross Gannon, co-founded the shipyard Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway which designs, builds and repairs wooden boats. Her brother Antonio Salguero has worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska and is a boat designer and shipwright near Seattle.

 John Weaver began his career on stage, first as performer then in production in theatre and television. From staff Director at WABC-TV he turned to producing and directing commercials for twenty five years, becoming a Senior Vice President at Young and Rubicam. John's father in law was captain of the Mary Whalen for twenty years. His father in law was not at the helm when the Mary Whalen ran aground in the famous 1968 episode that led to a Supreme Court case, that was the other captain.  Turning from the commercial world, John has made the ship the focus of his creative energy since 2007. He brings a unique personal history to PortSide's re-use of the Mary Whalen.

Office & Boat Crew

Michael Abegg supervises our volunteer days and does shipwork.  He was previously First Mate of the schooner Lettie G. Howard from the South Street Seaport and has worked on various sailing vessels, tugboats, dinner boats, party boats and an oil tanker.

Dan Goncharoff (see bio above under Board)

Michael Hirsch is a consultant at PortSide who was introduced to us via our winning his services through the EDC/Levin Institute JumpStart NYC program. He created a PortSide roadmap for capacity building.  He has a graduate degree in City and Regional Planning from Pratt Institute and a Preservation Planning certification.  Michael served as a preservation planning consultant to the New York City Department of City Planning, where he completed work on design guidelines and signage recommendations for the Coney Island Redevelopment Master Plan.  He has been a board member of the Society for Commercial Archeology since 2009.

Dana Kochnower is a freelance video journalist who lives in Brooklyn.  She started her career in local news at WPIX-TV, spending time at CNN before launching the online video departments at SmartMoney.com and FOXBusiness.com.  A student of Conservation and Environmental Sustainability at Columbia University's Center for Environmental Research and Conservation, Dana came to Portside New York with an interest in environmental education and re-purposing urban space.  Dana documents Portside's events, watch the videos here: BlueBQ, TankerTunes.

Carolina Salguero (see bio above under Board)

Dave Sheahan, IT coordinator, has tackled head-on the technological communication challenges of having an office on a seventy-two year old former oil tanker. Dave has delivered wired and WiFi Internet to all the cabins and galley and has beamed high speed Internet from a house outside the Red Hook Marine Terminal (thank you Liz and Rafi Magnes). In addition, Dave has helped to secure donations from local and national companies to improve PortSide's technology infrastructure. He is working with PortSide's sponsors and technology companies to bring the Mary A. Whalen into the twenty-first century.

Other

SNR Denton US LLP, one of the 25 largest legal services providers in the world, with lawyers and professionals in 33 countries, serves as outside general counsel to PortSide.  Charles D. Brown, formerly of Thacher Profitt, provides counsel to PortSide on maritime matters.