Tom A. Bernstein

President, Chelsea Piers Management, Inc. and Chairman, Partnership for Public Service

Tom A. Bernstein is president and co-founder of Chelsea Piers, L.P., formed in 1992 to develop and operate the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex, a 30-acre waterfront sports village located between 17th and 23rd Streets along Manhattan’s Hudson River. He is also co-chairman of Chelsea Piers Connecticut, a 450,000-square-foot sports facility, which opened in Stamford, Connecticut in July 2012 and Chelsea Piers Fitness, the company’s first stand-alone fitness club in downtown Brooklyn which was founded in 2018.

Bernstein was one of the two principals of Silver Screen Management, Inc., and the affiliated Silver Screen companies, which from 1983 to 1998 financed 75 films with the Walt Disney Company, including such box office successes as “Beauty and the Beast,” “Pretty Woman” and “The Little Mermaid.” From 1989 to 1998, Bernstein was one of the principal owners of the Texas Rangers Baseball Club with the ownership group led by George W. Bush.

Over the past 30 years, Bernstein has taken a leadership role in several organizations focusing on global human rights and citizen service. He is the chair of the Partnership for Public Service and co-chair emeritus of Human Rights First. Since 2010, Bernstein has served as chairman of the board of directors of Cities of Service, appointed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He is also the chairman of the Human Freedom Advisory Council of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. In 2002, President Bush appointed Bernstein to the board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where he served as board chair from 2010 to 2017, appointed by President Obama. Bernstein now serves as chairman emeritus.

From 1978 to 1983, Bernstein was an attorney with the entertainment department of the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York. He served as a law clerk from 1977 to 1978 for the Honorable Jack B. Weinstein in federal district court in New York.

Tom is a graduate of Yale College (’74 summa cum laude) and Yale Law School (’77), where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal.