Know Your Neighbor: Andrew Brozman, Attorney/Tina’s Wish Co-founder, Chappaqua
Tina Brozman was a respected attorney and the youngest judge ever appointed to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York when she took the bench at 32 years old.
For well over three decades, her husband, Andrew Brozman, has been a highly accomplished financial restructuring attorney.
But their greatest contribution may be far removed from the world where they met as young lawyers and devoted their careers.
The Chappaqua couple co-founded The Honorable Tina Brozman Foundation for Ovarian Cancer Research, also known as Tina’s Wish, following Tina Brozman’s diagnosis with ovarian cancer in 2005.
After Tina died in June 2007 at 54, Andrew Brozman has carried on his late wife’s legacy through what is believed to be the only nonprofit organization exclusively dedicated to the early detection and prevention of ovarian cancer. He serves on the board of directors of Tina’s Wish, which has raised about $5.5 million since its inception.
“My wife always felt that those who are fortunate and talented to achieve success have an obligation to share that good fortune with others,” Brozman, 63, recalled of his wife’s passion and commitment, “and I view this as just an extension of that view that she had in that she decided that women should not suffer the same fate, that there should be a way to prevent this devastation.”
The symptoms often associated with ovarian cancer are often mistaken for gastrointestinal or gynecological problems, and, therefore, can be easily missed. Once detected, it is often too late to help the patient.
It was Tina Brozman’s general practitioner who suspected ovarian cancer after she had gone elsewhere with persistent symptoms, Andrew Brozman said. A day later she was in surgery. By then, the cancer was Stage 4.
“She wasn’t angry that she had cancer,” Brozman said. “She was angry that the medical world was incapable of devoting significant attention to this issue and that insurance companies were not supportive of the…tests that were available at the time, and she was inalterably committed to changing the situation.”
The foundation helped forge a consortium late last year that includes five of the most prominent cancer research facilities in the country–the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute–featuring groundbreaking cooperation in the area of medical research.
Next Tuesday an event may provide Tina’s Wish with eve more notable exposure. The foundation’s inaugural Tina’s Wish Global Women’s Health Award will be presented to fellow Chappaqua resident and former president Bill Clinton at The Waldorf Astoria.
There is certainly the local connection, but Tina’s Wish and Clinton’s foundation share a key mission, Brozman said.
“We recognize, and perhaps that’s why we reached out to the president, that what we’re able to solve here through our research will have a global impact,” Brozman said. “It’s kind of like a toggle switch–we solve it here, we solve it everywhere, and this is a tremendous, tremendous benefit for women worldwide.”
Helping to steer a nonprofit was something Brozman had no prior experience with and little preparation. A Long Island native, he had graduated Colgate, then NYU Law School and initially was a litigator.
He worked in the same law firm as Tina, a Fordham Law School graduate and financial restructuring attorney. One weekend she asked him to assist her with work and realized he was in the wrong area of law.
“What she was doing was a lot more interesting than what I was doing,” he said.
They married and had three children, a son, Nick, now 31, and twin daughters Alix, also a financial restructuring attorney, and Wallis, now 28. The family moved to Chappaqua about 30 years ago.
Currently, Andrew Brozman leads the financial structuring group at a Manhattan-based international law firm. Eventually Tina rose to become chief judge of the bankruptcy court before returning to practice law.
Brozman is determined that his family’s tragedy will not deter him from seeing Tina’s wish come true.
“There really is no alternative but to carry on, and I think Tina’s death teaches us to try and do that as best we could,” Brozman said.
To learn more about Tina’s Wish, visit tinaswish.org/globalhealth or contact Executive Director Beverly Wolfer at 212-880-5757 or e-mail bwolfer@tinaswish.org.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/
