People and Leadership - The International Freedom Center

Biography

Richard J. Tofel
President and Chief Operating Officer
dtofel@ifcwtc.org

Dick Tofel is president and chief operating officer of the International Freedom Center, having been named to this post in October 2004.

As the day to day executive charged with the development and operations of the International Freedom Center, Mr. Tofel’s duties include raising funds for the development of the Center and coordinating the planning and construction of the Center. He directs the Center’s staff and serves as a liaison with the Center’s key constituencies, including the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and other government agencies, 9/11 families, the Center’s Committee of Scholars and Advisors, and other Historic Site Museums of Conscience. Mr. Tofel reports to Tom A. Bernstein, co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of the Center, and the Center’s Board of Directors. He works closely with Peter Kunhardt, co-founder and creative director of the Center.

Mr. Tofel served as a vice president of Dow Jones & Company from 1997 until joining the International Freedom Center, and as the assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal beginning in 2002. In the latter capacity, the Journal’s international editions reported to him. He was also a director on the joint venture boards of SmartMoney and Vedomosti, the leading Russian business newspaper. He played leading roles in the development of the forthcoming Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition, in the redesign of the Journal and the creation of the Personal Journal section in 2002, and in Dow Jones’s response to the events of September 11, 2001.

His earlier roles at Dow Jones included assistant general counsel (1989-1992), assistant managing editor of the Journal (1992-1995), director of international administration and development (1995-1997) vice president of corporate communications (1997-2000), and assistant to the publisher of the Journal (2000-2002). Before joining Dow Jones, Mr. Tofel was an associate at the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler from 1983 to 1986. Mr. Tofel moved to the New York office of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in 1986.

A native New Yorker, Mr. Tofel’s previous public service includes stints during the administration of New York City Mayor Edward Koch as executive director of the Beattie Commission on reorganizing the Human Resources Administration and as a member of the Liman Commission investigating the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Mr. Tofel earned a bachelor’s degree, a law degree and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University. He is the author of three books, “A Legend in the Making: The New York Yankees in 1939” (2002), “Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater, and the New York He Left Behind” (2004) and “Sounding the Trumpet: The Making of John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address” (2005). He is a member of the board of trustees of Wildcat Service Corp., the advisory board of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship Program in Economics and Business Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Tofel and his wife, Jeanne Straus, have a daughter, Rachel, and a son, Colin. They live in Riverdale, N.Y.

“Like many people, for the last three years, I’ve been looking for a way to meaningfully participate in the principal struggle of our age. The International Freedom Center will serve as a powerful forum for courage, and a museum of conscience on behalf of individual freedom, free societies and freedom around the world.”
- Richard J. Tofel, President, The International Freedom Center

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