Director, 92nd Street Y Milstein/Rosenthal Center for Media & Technology & Director, Legal Affairs
Karen Kolodny fulfills two roles at 92nd Street Y. She is the Claire B. and Lawrence A. Benenson Director of 92Y's Milstein/Rosenthal Center for Media & Technology, and she is the Director of Legal Affairs. At the Milstein/Rosenthal Center, Ms. Kolodny develops and oversees new-media projects including "Live from NY's 92nd Street Y™," a satellite-broadcast program which shares 92Y programs with communities across North America; partnerships with Audible™, a packager of audio programs, and Amazon®, where video recordings of 92Y programs are sold to consumers; and ShalomTV, the only Jewish video-on-demand supplier. As the founding Director of Legal Affairs, a position she has held since 2005, Ms. Kolodny oversees everything from intellectual property issues to talent contracts, government grants and insurance matters.
Before joining the staff of 92nd Street Y in 2001, Ms. Kolodny was instrumental in launching sothebys.com, Sotheby's online auction operation, which generated $50 million a year. This experience prepared her to develop and, in 2003, launch 92Y's first e-commerce website, www.92Y.org, which now accounts for 40 percent of 92Y's revenues and is visited by more than 3 million people annually, from every state in the US and around the world, up from 2 million in 2006 and 1 million in 2005.
Ms. Kolodny holds a B.C.L. (Civil Law Degree) and a LL.B. (Common Law Degree) from McGill University and a Master of Law (LLM) (First Class Honours) from Cambridge University. A member of the bar associations of New York, Quebec and Ontario, she has practiced law in Canada, the United States, Belgium and the Czech Republic. Ms. Kolodny was the youngest member of the Canadian negotiating team for the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Negotiations (1990) and a clerk to a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Ms. Kolodny is chair of the not-for-profit subcommittee of the Entertainment, Arts & Sports Law Committee of the New York State Bar Association. She has certificates in Arts Administration and Business Technology, both from New York University.