In 2001, Mark Goldman ’76 was watching CNN at home in Weston, Massachusetts, when Jeff Gardere ’78, a board-certified clinical psychologist, appeared on the screen offering advice on talking to kids about terrorism. Goldman called out to his wife: “You won’t believe this! I know him! He played in our band!”

That band, a highlight of Goldman’s time at the Ģ����ý, hadn’t played together in three decades. And it had been just as long since Goldman, the band’s keyboardist, had talked with Gardere, one of the singers.

Now the two catch up every weekend via Zoom, along with other members of Broad Street Stroke, whose repertoire included hits from Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Tower of Power, and the Average White Band.

After Gardere caught wind of the CNN sighting, the men reconnected and decided it would be good to get the band back together regularly, even if virtually and without instruments. Living in several states along the East Coast, they diligently show up on Saturday mornings to discuss all things past, present, and future—but mostly the state of the world.

“This is almost like therapy for us,” says Gardere. “We have different political views and don’t always agree, but we talk with one another in a respectful manner, and that really should be the blueprint for America.”

On a recent weekend, four of the band’s seven members—the regulars—toggle between being playful and serious. After mournfully acknowledging the passing of Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, the men reminisce about the good ol’ days, when Broad Street Stroke earned attention both for its sound and for bringing a diverse group of
students together.

From a 1975 review in the : “For those who love to dance the night away, the Stroke gives its audiences enough ‘bumping’ and ‘hustling’ type tunes to keep even the most talented New York City disco-goers satisfied.”

Another Campus Times article credited Broad Street Stroke with performing “a bit of magic” not on the stage but by bringing different races together. The piece compared the band’s impact to “mixing salt and sugar—the individual grains will not change characteristics, but the mixture will have a new taste.”

“The two singers were Black and the other musicians were white,” says Gardere. “That was a phenomenon at the time on campus. Those ’70s were a wonderful mix of entertainment, music, energy, positivity, and racial togetherness. We were brothers.”

Goldman asks if the others can still picture the shock on the audience’s faces during their first gig, dressed in hats and platform shoes, and entertaining with choreographed movements. “We were just doing our thing,” he says. “It wasn’t like, ‘We need to make a statement.’ We were doing the music, and that spoke for itself.”

Their sound was impressive enough to land them a booking on a cruise ship bound for Nassau, Bahamas. The men swap stories about being naive kids back then, when a Genesee beer cost a mere 25 cents. “Our gigs were overflowing and there were a lot of romantic adventures for us on that ship—and I’ll leave it at that,” says Gardere.

Together for two years, Broad Street Stroke practiced at least twice a week in one of the University’s residence towers, after getting official permission to line the walls of an extra room with acoustic tiles. Rehearsals lasted several hours—longer when the band was preparing for a show.

Nowadays musicians can type a song title into a search engine and find sheet music. That would’ve been helpful to the band’s members, none of whom had perfect pitch. Instead, “we’d be standing around our chintzy little record player, putting that needle down repeatedly” and going back and forth about which chord was the correct one, remembers lead guitarist John Accordino ’76. “And we would do that over and over until we got it right.”

Bass guitarist Clint Conley ’77, who had the best relative pitch in the band, also used the phone’s dial tone as a reference point when tuning instruments to F and A. “We practiced like crazy, to the detriment of our studies,” says Accordino. “But we were tight.”

The band members have remained tight in other ways in recent years. Percussionist Louis Gioffre ’76 lost his wife to lung cancer in 2023. Over the two years she was sick, the men offered support, as did other members of the band who pop in every now and then on Saturday mornings.

One of them is Reggie Washington, a Rochester local who sang in the group. After the Broad Street Stroke years, he became a professional gospel singer and contributed to the recording of two gospel albums. That led him to the ministry. Now a bishop, he called at times to pray with Gioffre’s wife. (The group still gets a kick out of Washington’s profession, given that he once was dubbed the “Don Juan” of the band.)

The other occasional drop-in is Conley, who went on to play bass in the post-punk band —recognized as a major influence on alternative rock bands such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and R.E.M. (The Boston City Council October 4 “Mission of Burma Day” in 2009.) Although he couldn’t make this particular weekly meeting, Conley later says, “I have such affection for these dudes. Locking down a funk groove with these guys was absolutely exhilarating.”

The men briefly mention seeing one another at the memorial service for Gioffre’s wife—the first time since college that most of them had been together in person. (Goldman, Gioffre, and Conley are the only ones who’ve stayed in consistent touch since graduation.)

“It was a tough reunion,” Gardere says. “It meant a lot to me that you guys showed up,” Gioffre responds.

“It was never in question,” Goldman assures him.

They take a beat, then shift into a substantial digression about Smitty’s Birdland, later known as Snuffy’s Birdland—the popular barbecue and fried chicken restaurant they’d go to after each show, adrenaline pumping and needing to unwind.

After sharing memories of the dirty plastic water pitchers and “hot sauce that was basically disinfectant for your insides,” Goldman brings up how much Gioffre adored Smitty’s macaroni salad—and how Conley made up a short song about it.

“And how did that song go?” Gardere asks, egging on Goldman to sing.

Goldman grins, recollecting how Gioffre would “become enraged” by the ditty. “So, of course,” he says, “that meant now I was going to sing it with Clint. Lou got the desired effect. He wanted us to sing it to him again, so we did.”

“Oh, stop it,” Gioffre says, smiling, as everyone else laughs. “It’s never-ending needling.”

Gardere points out that every Broad Street Stroke member—all “solid, honest, good people”—has had a successful career, which he credits in large part to their Ģ����ý education. He has also found it fascinating to watch how each one has remained roughly the same while evolving in his personality.

He paints Goldman, who transformed a family backpack and sports company into an international brand, as the past and present leader of the group. Goldman continues to play the piano “fairly frequently” and sometimes jams at a dinner club. “I would be a liar if I didn’t say it’s still a thrill to play in front of people,” he confesses.

Gardere describes Gioffre, founder of a national service provider to petroleum and clean energy markets, as having “a very quiet strength and humility.” Shortly after graduating college, Gioffre played in the New Wave band the Digits, which “recorded in England at famous studios with famous record producers,” although nothing was released commercially. These days he rents studio space for his drums and 
recording gear.

Accordino, a university professor of urban and regional planning, is a “mellow, extremely intellectual person” with an “egalitarian perspective on all things,” according to Gardere. Accordino played acoustic guitar regularly until a couple of years ago. Conley, who recently retired from broadcast journalism, “was quite aloof” but “always consistent and reliable.” And Washington, serving his constituents in Tallahassee, Florida, “was always gregarious and generous.”

Gardere doesn’t leave himself out, admitting to “lots of imposter syndrome” both as a musician and across several careers, which required him to learn on the fly. “I was a showman then and I guess still a showman now,” he says. Gardere juggles several professional roles, which include maintaining a private clinical practice and appearing as a therapist on The Real Housewives of Atlanta and other TV shows. He also sings with jazz bands.

(A testament to the group’s good-natured banter: When Conley learned of Gardere’s characterization of him, he wrote in an email, “Aloof? Aloof? Ha! I shall challenge the good doctor to a duel at dawn.”)

These weekly gatherings, Gardere continues, are “a connection from the past to the present, a remembrance of what we were and who we became, and maybe more than anything else, a safe space to talk about how the world has lost its [bleep] mind.”

This story appears in the spring 2026 issue of Rochester Review, the magazine of the Ģ����ý.

What was your first car?

Greg Jorgensen lights up at the subject of cars, especially when reminiscing about his first Ford: a 2001 dark green Escape.

“I remember thinking it was the nicest, fanciest car with all this awesome technology—the radio actually said what the name of the song was in scrolling LED lights,” he says. “I had really hit the big-time as an auto exec in my fancy new car!”

Now, he’s no longer just driving Ford vehicles. Instead, he’s helping steer the financial direction of one of the world’s most recognized automotive brands.

As chief financial officer for North American ICE Trucks at Ford Motor Company, Greg Jorgensen must pivot quickly when the market swings from “one big thing” to the next. In fact, he has seen more changes in auto industry predictions in the last five years than in the previous two decades.

First autonomous vehicles were expected to dominate the roadways. Then it was electric vehicles. Then it was the idea that drivers would rent or buy time in a car instead of owning one. Through it all, Jorgensen, who earned an MBA in finance in 2000 from the Ģ����ý’s , has had to know when to double down and when to shift focus—at least in the short run.

“Sometimes there are big dollars involved, but you have to be able to take the risk and move to something new,” he says.

Early lessons show up on the job

Jorgensen traces his adaptability to Simon.

He entered business school straight from earning a BS in civil engineering from Lehigh University. As a result, he was introduced to business case planning, financial scheduling, balance sheets, and other foundational components of “everything I do at Ford every day,” says Jorgensen. His tenure at Ford and wholly owned subsidiaries of Ford has included more than a dozen finance analyst, supervisor, manager, and CFO positions since graduation. He has held his current role—overseeing its lineup of trucks powered by traditional internal combustion engines (ICE)—since 2022.

“From day one, I was ready to go. [The Simon professors] made us feel we were getting the tools to be successful, and failure wasn’t an option. I can look back on that now and say that made a huge difference.”

In his first year at Simon, being assigned to a group of students from various generations and countries exposed him to “diversity that helped us learn to deal with each other and deal with conflict when working together,” he says.

Those lessons, as well as Jorgensen’s ability to shift course quickly, were reinforced by an unlikely source in the classroom—an operations management simulation called the Soda Pop Game. Now computerized, but at the time played with small plastic bottles, Jorgensen and other students worked in teams to manage a soft drink factory while maximizing profitability. He remembers the game fondly: “It was a real-world way to apply what we were learning in the classroom, and it was fun to have some competition.”

Connections over calculations

Jorgensen has made a career of working with numbers and excels at the financial discipline required to run a large-dollar, thin-margin business competitively. Yet he says his relationships with others have carried the most heft when making high-stakes decisions as a finance leader.

It’s important to learn how to navigate different perspectives because people can be very particular, he points out.

“Somebody has to approve spending money at the end of the day. But there are different ways to get there, which is why the people I work with are more important than any specific job,” explains Jorgensen. He meets colleagues for lunch, builds relationships outside the office, and often handpicks those who work most closely with him. “You just have to keep in mind that everybody’s at work trying to do their best.”

Nothing less than success

Despite the enormous consequences that could come from a miscalculated decision, Jorgensen doesn’t waste time thinking about potential downsides at work. “We always talk about the upside,” he says. “It’s more about ‘Is this going to be moderately successful or wildly successful?’”

Jorgensen credits that measured confidence to the personalized, hands-on interactions with professors at Simon who taught from real-world work experience. He recalls how this influenced stepping into his first role at Ford, without having any of his own practical insight: “From day one, I was ready to go. They made us feel we were getting the tools to be successful, and failure wasn’t an option. I can look back on that now and say that made a huge difference.”

A non-negotiable standard

Jorgensen has come a long way since that first Ford Escape. These days, he cruises in a 1964½ Mustang convertible—a nod to both his personal passion and the industry he helps shape.

“Staying motivated is easy when you like your job,” he says, adding that passion is a non-negotiable for those wanting to create meaningful change in their industry

“Ideas come quicker,” he continues. “It’s hard to make an impact when you’re just going through the motions.”

“They had a humanistic approach to their work,” he says. “My father had private consultations at home, and he would take me to visit him at the hospital. It was part of family life to understand there was mental illness and that it was pretty much like any other illness.”

These days, Téllez makes movies with patients from psychiatric institutions around the world. His most recent collaboration took place in Rochester, culminating in at the Memorial Art Gallery.

The 33-minute film, inspired by the 1922 expressionist silent horror film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, combines black-and-white 16mm and color digital film and was shot at the Eastman Kodak factory, the George Eastman Museum’s Dryden Theatre, and the Main Street Armory.

Téllez traveled frequently to Rochester from his home in Queens to work on the film with a dedicated group of 10 people diagnosed with mental illness.

“The work is between fiction and commentary,” Téllez says. A vampire was chosen as the main character “to reflect on light and darkness as the fundamental principles of cinema, and to focus on those who are stigmatized by being different and condemned to invisibility.”

The work is the first in a series of commissioned media art exhibitions titled Reflections on Place, curated by John Hanhardt ’67, a world-renowned authority on the moving image.

According Jonathan Binstock, the Mary W. and Donald R. Clark Director of the , commissioning work is a greater financial investment than acquiring art already in existence, but “with greater risk comes greater reward. I believe Javier, who already is internationally known, has made the best and most important work of his career, and we will be able to share in that success.”

The next artist finding inspiration in Rochester for Reflections on Place is London’s Isaac Julien, who uses music, poetry, and visual effects in a multiple screen film installation inspired by two of Rochester’s most famous residents: abolitionist icon Frederick Douglass, and women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony. His work premieres in February 2019.

New York City’s pioneering video artist Dara Birnbaum follows in spring 2019, with her multichannel visual and sound installation spotlighting the 1964 Rochester race riots and their effect on the African-American community.

Each artist’s works will be individually presented, then will enter the musem’s permanent collection at the end of the exhibitions.

Téllez does not follow the conventional logic of narrative film. Instead, he combines different approaches to filmmaking to create an innovative, research-driven body of work full of surprises. His collaborators portray fictional patients in a set representing a ward at a 1960s-era insane asylum. They are shown simultaneously as actors and spectators of their own film.

NOSFERATU (The Undead) includes aspects of the manufacturing of celluloid film at the Kodak factory, and also documents a performance from renowned silent film accompanist Philip Carli, the George Eastman Museum’s resident musician.

Téllez has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Art Institute (2014), Kunsthaus Zürich in Switzerland (2014), Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City (2004) and other museums. He has been featured in many group exhibitions, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (2012), Whitney Biennial in New York (2008) and Venice Biennale (2001 and 2003).

Originally from Venezuela, Téllez has lived and worked in New York since 1993. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999, and the Global Mental Health Award for Innovation in the Arts from Columbia University in 2016.

Hanhardt, the MAG’s consulting senior curator of media arts, calls NOSFERATU (The Undead) “a powerful piece of installation art” that is “compelling, challenging, and revelatory” in today’s media culture.

Born, raised, and educated in Rochester—graduating with a bachelor’s degree in linguistics—Hanhardt coordinated Reflections on Place because he felt there were important events, people, and stories from Rochester that could speak to the nation and the world at large.

“Because we have John Hanhardt,” says Binstock, “we’re shifting from not having any moving image program to having one of the best in the world.”