The Pomona College Board of Trustees has elected investment company founder Paul Ghaffari ’80 and journalist and healthcare advocate Evelyn Nussenbaum ’84 as new members of the 31-member board. Both are alumni of the College.
Their four-year term on the Board began July 1. Trustees provide strategic guidance and fiduciary oversight, says Board Secretary Geoff Pearson, and ensure the College’s academic excellence and long-term sustainability.
Ghaffari is founder and chief investment officer of Pursuit Funds, an investment company that specializes in asset-based credit. Previously, he was a founding partner and co-CIO of Wingspan Capital, a niche alternative investment platform. In addition, he is an active early-stage investor in CultureTech, Inc., an SaaS enterprise that provides services for arts and culture institutions.
From 2010-2014, Ghaffari was chief investment officer of Seattle-based Vulcan Capital. Prior to that, he was a portfolio manager at Soros Fund Management in New York, a managing director at Morgan Stanley Asset Management, and a founding partner of the multi-strategy hedge fund company FrontPoint Partners LLC.
Ghaffari earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Pomona College in 1980. He later received a master’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.
As part of the Board, Ghaffari hopes to apply his business experience to help the College navigate the current challenging environment and to support “the peerless educational quality of Pomona,” he says. “Pomona has always had a very special place in my heart.”
A native of Pacific Palisades, California, Ghaffari and his wife, Lauren, now reside in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Nussenbaum is a journalist, nonprofit board member, and healthcare advocate. She began her career in the film industry before making a transition to the field of journalism. She was a producer for CNN and wrote and edited for The New York Times, Fortune, Wired and New York Post.
When Nussenbaum’s son, Sam, was diagnosed with epilepsy, her life took a pivotal turn. Conventional treatments failed to control the multiple seizures he experienced daily. Cannabidiol did provide relief, but the family was unable to obtain a reliable, medical-grade supply of the cannabis derivative, since it was illegal in the U.S.
After Nussenbaum learned that GW Pharmaceuticals, based in the United Kingdom, was developing cannabis-based drugs that might help her son, she convinced them to do a one-person trial with Sam. It was a dramatic success. She and her husband, Fred Vogelstein ’85, then launched efforts that eventually resulted in FDA approval of the drug Epidiolex in 2018—the first cannabis-derived pharmaceutical approved by the U.S. government. It is now prescribed in 40 states and 36 countries.
Nussenbaum received the Pomona College Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award in 2024 for her work in gaining Epidiolex approval. She currently serves on the board of Cityside Journalism Initiative, a local journalism nonprofit.
“My connection to Pomona was and is deep,” says Nussenbaum. “Pomona taught me to think critically, which was crucial to my career as a journalist. It also taught me to be intellectually flexible.”
She and her husband support the College’s Humanities Studio, “which feels crucial when the humanities have fallen out of favor at so many schools,” she says, adding, “I feel honored to have been asked to join the Board of Trustees.”