2009 NETWORKING® MAGAZINE’S DAVID AWARD HONOREE.

HON. ROGER TILLES

Member, New York State Board of Regents

Music and education interests have long laced the life of Roger Tilles, and surely added to the warm reception to his appointment in 2005 as a member of the New York State Board of Regents from the 10th Judicial District, Nassau and Suffolk counties. “Luckily,” he says, “the appointment coincided with the selling of the Tilles family business properties,” which gave him time to devote his energies to fostering arts education through support for the arts and integration of the arts into course studies.
As Tilles explains, the Board of Regents is the widest-ranging education institution in the country, approving all programs for Pre K-12 education and higher education, granting charters to all museums, libraries and public television stations, and licensing every profession in the state, except lawyers. He welcomes the input he receives while visiting schools and the chance to use resources from one arm of the education system to serve the needs of another.
“When I wasn’t in the vocation of education, I was always in avocation of education,” says Tilles. “Being a Regent is an incredibly fulfilling job. You can make a huge difference.”
Tilles’s love of music began in the Great Neck public schools with an enthusiastic music teacher, who was also the teacher of his brother and sister. “We were not a particularly musical family, but Dr. Pinter brought music into our lives,” says Tilles. At Great Neck North High School, he joined the Glee Club and formed a barbershop quartet, singing “all around the Island.” With Amherst roommate David Eisenhower, he says, “We sang our way through college.” Tilles helped start the Smith-Amherst Choral, and at University of Michigan School of Law, he sang with the Ann Arbor Chamber Singers. While earning his B.A. in American Studies and a minor in music, he pursued a New York City teaching certification at Long Island University’s C.W. Post campus, an experience that helped foster his lifelong interest in education issues.
Following his acceptance into the Bar, Tilles was appointed director of law and legislation for the Michigan Department of Education, taught education law courses at several universities in Michigan, was elected to the State Board of Education, and served as Executive Secretary to the Speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives. After an unsuccessful run for Congress, he helped manage a winning campaign for Senator Carl Levin, and moved to Washington, D.C. Tilles opened his own law practice, mostly lobbying for education groups, and was a member of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee. But he found this work ultimately “unfulfilling,” and in 1983, headed back to Long Island and the family business. For the next 20 years, he worked on negotiations, legal matters, civic relations, and the family foundation, and is now a director of Tilles Investment Companies.
Tilles real estate development, started by Tilles’ grandfather Eli, was kick-started on Long Island in the 1960s, when his father Gilbert recognized the value of family property along Hempstead Turnpike and developed a shopping center…the first local shopping area in the new Levittown community. Later, he sold these and other centers to concentrate on development in Woodbury at Crossways Park, Jericho Turnpike and Route 135, which became a focal point for large corporations and a hub of employment.
Shortly after Tilles’s return, the family decided to pursue music and the arts as a way of giving back to the communities that had supported their business. Through family friend, former Chief Judge Sol Wachtler who was nominating committee chair of the Board of Trustees, Long Island University, Gilbert Tilles joined the board in 1984. Roger followed a few years later, and was elected chair in 1998. The family became sustaining supporters of the arts and generous donors to the Rose and Gilbert Tilles Center for the Performing Arts at the C.W. Post campus.
Tilles always believed that people with seemingly competing interests could be more effective if they got together on common goals. Following this objective, he founded and served as chair of the Association for a Better Long Island. He served on the Executive Board of the Long Island Association, and the boards of WNET/Channel 13 and WLIW/Channel 21. He was a member and chair of the Long Island Regional Planning Board, and served as Executive Vice Chairman of the Tilles Center. “What I like to do the most is to bring people’s self-interests together,” says Tilles. “I’m not necessarily a technician, I’m an expeditor.”
Several years ago, Tilles initiated the forming of the Long Island Arts Alliance. LIAA has partnered with Newsday and Roslyn Savings Bank to start the Scholar-Artist Spotlight program and the Scholar-Artist Awards, which honored 20 high school artists at its inaugural ceremony in spring 2008. Tilles notes that an arts fund has been established with the Long Island Community Foundation to benefit collaborative projects within the arts community.
A member and past president of Temple Beth-El of Great Neck, board member of The Jewish Outreach Institute, and recognized religious leader, Tilles joined with Msgr. Tom Hartman in 1987 to form Project Understanding. The interfaith group selects about a dozen high school students each year, and after working on social action projects, they travel together to Israel. He notes, “The experience has profoundly affected the lives of scores of Jewish and Catholic teens.”
“I’ve been very blessed,” adds Tilles. Admittedly “a political junkie,” he reflects on having worked with politicians from both sides of the aisle—hosting fundraisers and advising political leaders at all levels. As a guest conductor at the Long Island Philharmonic, he studied the score and impressed the orchestra, as they naturally followed his lead. He organized and co-produced (with Pope John Paul II) the first Vatican commemoration of the Holocaust.
Tilles lives in Great Neck with his wife Jerry, who while raising a family and pursuing her career, attended C.W. Post, graduating Class salutatorian and receiving her degree in Philosophy. The Tilleses have teenage daughters, Eliana and Hanaleah. The family has a dog and, Tilles says, “a pig that lives in our livingroom; he’s the only pig in Great Neck, I’m sure.” (Pig acquired when Eliana had a veterinary interest). Tilles likes golfing, spending time at their Berkshire, MA, home, walking in the woods and going to cultural events.

NETWORKING® January 2009