Major Fellowship Activities: Urstadt worked on an NGO nuclear safety summit held in conjunction with the G-7 and Russian nuclear safety summit. He wrote a comparison of the task force’s proposals to the results of the nuclear safety summit. He also worked on an economic analysis of the costs of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, and helped prepare an NRDC presentation for the G-7 summit in Lyons, France on the proliferation dangers of Russia’s plutonium stockpiles.
He helped prepare the materials for an NRDC-sponsored conference of international nuclear safety experts in Moscow the week before the summit, and for a press center conducted during the summit, including fact sheets, the press releases and the report stating the position of NRDC and the panel on the issues that arose at the summit. After the summit, he wrote the follow-up report that was sent to the press and the foundations that funded the event.
He also worked on a paper analyzing the economic costs of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, and on a memo to the head of the Russian Affairs Bureau of the State Department summarizing the four worst environmental problems of global concern in Russia.
Current Activities: Urstadt is the CEO of PartnerVine, a common portal for law firms and legal service providers to sell their legal products. PartnerVine sells legal issue navigators, automated legal documents and other software from law firms and legal services companies like PwC, UBS, Simmons & Simmons and Gowling WLG. Urstadt founded PartnerVine in 2016 and it is based in New York and Zurich, Switzerland.
In continuation of the public interest work that began with his Scoville fellowship, he started PartnerVine Access, a pro bono initiative to promote access to legal services. In addition, Urstadt has been on the board of directors of the Sea Turtle Conservancy since 2000, an organization based in Florida and Costa Rica that is devoted to scientific research on and advocacy for sea turtles, and is responsible for the oversight of programs as a member of the board. Prior to starting PartnerVine he was the General Counsel for Capital Dynamics, a private equity manager headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. He was previously a vice president of LGT Capital Partners AG, in Zurich, Switzerland. At NYU Law School he was president of the Public Interest Law Foundation.
Exposure to the political advocacy process was the most meaningful aspect of my Scoville Peace Fellowship…Although I studied and researched the specifications of and uses of nuclear weapons materials, the safety of Soviet and American nuclear reactors and the technicalities and economics of nuclear materials reprocessing, I benefitted most from observing the manner in which successful advocates push their issues. The Fellowship has not only taught me how to translate my social concerns into direct action, but it has shown me the direction I need to take to begin doing so. I could not have been more pleased with my Scoville Fellowship.