EXTRAordinary PEOPLE

Mayor Brad Cohen was elected to the office in November 2016. The Mayor began his public career in 2010 when he was elected to the East Brunswick Board of Education. Working with a dedicated group of Board members, he helped navigate the schools through difficult economic times in the wake of the Recession and the draconian cuts in State Aid. He was named Board President in 2014 and helped select the new Superintendent of Schools. Balancing fiscal responsibilities with massive needs in information technology, strategic planning, and infrastructure, the future Mayor chose to use his skills to improve the quality of life for all the residents of East Brunswick.

Kate Lancaster is in her ninth year working as a middle school teacher at Jamesburg Public Schools. She is also a certified Reading Specialist and was recognized as an Exemplary Educator for the 2023-2024 school year for her strong knowledge and skills, inspiring presence, and positive impact on students, colleagues and the school community as a whole. Kate's own experience, as well as her work in the public school system, connected her with the Minding your Mind nonprofit and she is now heavily involved volunteering for their organization through the annual A Celebration of Life gala in Spring Lake, NJ. Her efforts have assisted in fundraising close to $300,000 over the past three events. She is passionate about ending the stigma associated with mental health issues and takes pride in her commitment to making a difference in her community.

Marc Korpus, having had a fascination with maps since youth, took up the creation of of them as an occupation at age 42. He found that mapmaking is now one facet of the discipline of "geographic information systems" (GIS), which marries cartography with databases and statistics and is performed on a computer rather than a drafting board. Until his recent retirement, Marc was a GIS analyst for a nationwide engineering firm, helping engineers and scientists in such endeavors as planning freight railways in New Jersey, monitoring the fish species in New York Bay and routing power from Quebec to New York City. 

Neil O. Lawner’s interest in photography began when he served in the Air Force on Guam from 1966-1968.  During that time, Japanese cameras such as Nikon and Pentax were being manufactured and were available at the Base Exchange. He soon became part of the Kodachrome generation and learned the basics of operating a SLR (single lens reflex) camera.Some of his work was noticed by a gallery owner in New Brunswick who provided artwork to some of the big pharmaceutical corporations in NJ.  The gallery sold many of his black and white images to these companies over the years, and this orthodontist soon would make a switch in careers to fulltime photographer.  Fifteen years ago, when he moved to New York City, he began to capture colorful images of people, culminating in his first self-published book Coney Island, Merriment, Mermaids and Memories in 2019, followed by a second book, Masked in Manhattan, images of people going about their daily lives in the city during the pandemic. Neil joined Soho Photo Gallery on White Street in Tribeca and exhibits there on a regular basis.

Steve Cohen has over 50 years of involvement in rugby.  He has been the catalyst in developing player safety, refereeing, and promoting the game at the grassroots level.  USA Rugby Eagle, Steve Hiatt, has said that “No conversation could take place regarding administrators and contributions to American Rugby without Steve’s name being mentioned.”  Among his many contributions was pioneering rugby safety by publishing the “Safer Rugby Program” to promote and encourage safe rugby practices.  Steve’s work in the USA Rugby Collegiate Committee led to the creation of the Division 2 playoffs.  He formed the National Small College Rugby Organization to serve Division 3 which put small colleges on the map and gave them a platform to grow and succeed as well, inspiring coaches and players. NSCRO was rebranded as National Collegiate Rugby in 2020 and now serves more than 700 men’s and women’s college teams.  In addition, Steve refereed for nearly 40 years and was a charter member of the USARFU Referees& Laws Committee.  Steve supported the growth of women’s rugby as head referee for the first five Women’s National Championships, writing articles for Rugby Magazine and providing training for women referees.

AnnMarie Karczmit has a passion for volunteering.  A general manager at NJBIZ, a business to business newspaper, she is a wife and mother of a 21- year- old son. She started volunteering when she was 13 years old working in a nursing home and never really stopped.  AnnMarie has volunteered as a docent at a small museum, den leader/committee chair for the Boy Scouts of America, and various roles at her church, to name a few. In the past few years she took her love of volunteering and paired it with her desire to help empowering teenage girls and created a group called Girls Gifts. Girls Gifts is open to middle and high school girls and uses cooking, crafting, mentorship, and faith as a way to begin an open dialogue about what is important to them. She also runs a similar program for women called Coffee, Cake and Conversation.

Amy Solomon was working in the television industry for 10 years before changing careers and decided to make life a little “sweeter.” Together with her mother, she started Just One Bite, a cookie company specializing in bite size gourmet cookies and pies. Her cookies and pookies (pie+cookie = pookie) are handmade, using the finest ingredients and are just the right size so that you can pop them in your mouth. Their goal is to make someone’s day a little brighter through their delicious baked treats.  They are based in the northern New Jersey area and ship nationwide.

WARREN KASDAN is a retired lawyer with a passion for travel.  After 50 years of frequent voyages, he has now visited all seven continents, 111 present or former countries and 45 states.  Within days after graduating from Princeton University, he set off on a two-month, 14,000 mile automobile trip around the United States.  Within hours after completing the Bar Exam following graduation from Boston University Law School, he set off on a six-week trip to Europe, including a week in the Soviet Union.  Early trips took him to India, Nepal, Israel, China, Argentina, Brazil, Thailand.  Later, he visited Turkey, Kenya, Tanzania, Philippines, Egypt, South Africa, Australia, Bolivia, Peru.  After retiring, he saw Vietnam, Cambodia, Central America, Ukraine, Ecuador, Tunisia, Chile, the Central Asian Republics, Indonesia, Cuba, Myanmar, the Caucasus, U.A.E., Oman and Mongolia.  He has special fondness for exploring ancient ruins and observing remarkable geography.  However, he particularly enjoys his first, serendipitous walk around a foreign city.