Lawrence A. Rand is Senior Vice President, co-founder and director of Kekst and Company, Inc., a New York-based corporate communications counseling company.

Mr. Rand has had extensive experience in financial public relations and investor relations, as well as crisis communications, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate restructurings and litigation support.

 Prior to the founding of Kekst and Company in 1971, Mr. Rand was a senior executive at Ruder and Finn.  He also served with the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., and has taught history at New York University and Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

 He graduated, with honors, in 1964, from Brown University, and received his M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1998) from New York University.  He has published a number of articles on business history and economics, and has served on the faculty of the Practising Law Institute. 

 Mr. Rand is the former Chairman of the Board (1987-1992) and remains an Honorary Trustee of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association (The ALS Association), a non-profit health care organization headquartered in Los Angeles that is dedicated to the eradication of Lou Gehrig's disease.  In 1997, he received that organization’s Jacob Javits Lifetime Achievement Award for his work on behalf of ALS victims and their families.  In his honor, The ALS Association established The Rand Prize, an annual award to individuals or organizations who have helped ALS patients. 

 He is active in a number of projects on behalf of Brown University where he served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Brown Annual Fund and, in 1999, was awarded the Ittelson Prize for his contributions to the University. He is currently a Co-Chair of the University’s Campaign for Academic Excellence as well as a member of President Ruth Simmons’ Media Advisory Council.  He is also a director of the USTA Tennis and Education Foundation, the non-profit arm of the United States Tennis Association, where he serves as chairman of its Grants Committee. 

 Mr. Rand has lived in Rye Brook, N.Y. since 1972, where he has served as Chairman on the Village’s Ethics Board since the Board’s founding in 1993 until 2000, when he was elected to the Rye Brook Board of Trustees, the Village’s governing body (2000-2002), and was Chairman of the Rye Brook Firehouse Construction Committee.  In 2004, Mr. Rand was elected Mayor of the Village of Rye Brook.

 He is married to Madelon and has three children, Allan (married to Betsy), Joshua (married to Janey) and Emily (married to Allen Popowitz).  Allan and Betsy has made him the grandfather of Meredith, Samantha and Lindsay (all of whom live in Seattle, to his great dismay!)