At the end of this school year, Kenneth Plevan will become a Trustee Emeritus, after serving as a Gateway Trustee for 27 years. Ken exemplifies the community spirit that is at the heart of The Gateway Schools. He is a Gateway leader who, over the years, took on challenges that helped assure Gateway’s continued growth and success. His enthusiasm for providing for the needs of Gateway students was inspiring and infectious. Both Ken and his wife Betsy could always be counted on to do what was needed.
A partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher, and Flom LLP, Ken is a specialist in advertising and trademark law. Ken founded the firm’s Intellectual Property and Technology Group, and co-chaired that group for 20 years. He co-authored a leading book in the advertising compliance field, The Advertising Compliance Handbook (PLI 2d Ed. 1991), and is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. Ken repeatedly has been selected for inclusion in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business and The Best Lawyers in America. He also teaches a course on Advanced Trademark Law at Fordham Law School.
One year after Ken and Betsy’s son, Jeffrey, became a Gateway student at the age of 5, Ken joined our Board of Trustees. Ken’s mentor Les Arps had been Gateway’s first Board Chair (having been drafted for that role by Claire Flom, Gateway’s founder), and Ken assumed that position in his fourth year on the Board. He continued to serve as Chair for the next 12 years and remains on the Board to this day.
As a father of a Gateway student, Ken was intimately aware of the amazing work the school was doing; he recognized the opportunity to build fundraising and community awareness to a level that would secure the brightest possible future for Gateway and its students. Ken helped contribute to growth and success the school has enjoyed over the past 27 years, and his dedication has been a positive force for Gateway as it navigated historical breakthroughs including a move from the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church to the school’s second home on the Lower East Side. As Board Chair, Ken recognized that Gateway was a pioneer in special education and, perhaps as importantly, social development issues and helped the school spread awareness of its work by helping to publish The Gateway Social Development Program both in the U.S. and Japan. This guide influenced teaching in mainstream and special ed classrooms and is still being used at Gateway for teacher training.
And his school contributions outside the boardroom have been just as rich – in fact, Ken and his wife, Betsy, hosted the first-ever Parents’ Welcome Cocktail Party (in their living room!), a favorite annual event that is now a Gateway tradition. They helped organize early annual fund raising auctions, and for more than 10 years Ken served as auctioneer, generating much excitement and needed dollars for Gateway. We are honored to pay tribute to Ken Plevan, and extend tremendous thanks to him for more than a quarter century of extraordinary leadership and support.
