Newly betrothed couple, Permele Doyle of New York, NY and her fiance Garner Robinson of New Orleans, LA. were feted on Thursday, November 7th, 2019 at an intimate dinner in the home of Samantha Topping Gellert and her husband John Gellert. Guests included the parents of the couple Pam and Bill Doyle, Toto Robinson and Parker Sternbergh, and the parents on the hostess, Nancy and Joe Missett.
The dinner tables were themed by locations that feature prominently in the lives of their families: New York, London, New Orleans and Capri. New York and London are where the couple spends much of their time. Permele lives in New York and is the Founder and President of Billion Dollar Boy, a London-based global influencer marketing agency. She also spends a significant amount of time in New Orleans where Garner was born and raised and where he currently is the CEO & President of Robinson Lumber Company, founded in 1893 by his great-great grandfather.
While the couple will marry in the summer of 2020 in Puglia, Italy, it was in the summer of 1986 in Capri, Italy, that Samantha joined the Doyle family as a mother’s helper while Pam was pregnant with Permele. After Permele’s birth later that year, Samantha was honored to be named her godmother, cementing their deep friendship.
Other friends who gathered to celebrate were Kara Young and Peter Georgopoulos, Frederic Fekkai and Shirin von Wulffen, Dixi and Sarah von Maltzhan, Bobby and Barbara Liberman, John Diefenbach and Karen Wilberding Diefenbach, Nancy and Peter Harris, Leslie Gordon Johnson, Michael Rena, Huger Foote, Magee and Matthew McBride, Adam Klopp, Emily Hottensen, Nicholas McClelland, Cleo Brock-Abraham and James Talbot.
The Hereditary Disease Foundation, which is dedicated to funding research to cure Huntington’s disease and impact other brain disorders, raised $1 million to benefit innovative scientific research at its Celebrating Discoveries in Neuroscience Symposium and Gala on October 28 at the Harvard Club. The 2019 Leslie Gehry Brenner Prize for Innovation in Science was presented to Dr. Scott Zeitlin of the University of Virginia School of Medicine. The evening was hosted by Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes, CBS News correspondent. The keynote speaker was Dr. Cori Bargmann of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Emmy award-winning journalist Charles Sabine was a featured speaker.
Dr. Nancy Wexler, President of the Hereditary Disease Foundation, said, “We thank our generous and visionary supporters for their continued commitment to funding creative and game-changing scientific research. Their support enables us to provide funding to brilliant scientists who have turned concepts in the laboratory into clinical trials that are changing the lives of Huntington’s disease patients and their families. The cure is within our grasp.”
Each year, the Hereditary Disease Foundation presents the Leslie Gehry Brenner Prize for Innovation in Science to support a scientist who exemplifies qualities of inventiveness and imagination in science. The annual award was created by the Foundation’s founding director and world-renowned architect Frank Gehry and his family to honor the memory of his late daughter, a gifted artist, painter, photographer, and filmmaker.
The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the world’s largest private funder of mental health research grants, awarded its 2019 Outstanding Achievement Prizes and the 2019 Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health at its International Awards Dinner on Friday, November 1, at the Pierre. Earlier that day, the Foundation held a free mental health research symposium at the Kaufman Music Center, at which the Outstanding Prizewinners presented updates on research discoveries. The events celebrated the power of neuroscience, psychiatric research and humanitarian efforts to transform the lives of people who are living with mental illness.
The Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health was presented to William Carpenter, Jr., for his leadership, advocacy and research in schizophrenia. The Honorary Pardes Prize was presented to Cynthia Germanotta and Born This Way Foundation for leadership in supporting the mental and emotional health of young people.
Dr. Herbert Pardes, President of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation’s Scientific Council and Executive Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, said, “The Pardes Humanitarian Prize was developed from our Board Chairman Steve Lieber’s original idea to take special note of people and organizations whose humanitarian work is transformative and of great magnitude. The Prize honors those who comprehensively care, teach, investigate, work, and passionately advocate for improving the mental health of society.”
The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation awards research grants to develop improved treatments, cures and methods of prevention for mental illness.
Photographs by John Calabrese (Permele Doyle); Chad David Kraus (Brain & Behavior)
