A longtime friend and neighbour:

Roberta S. Karmel, age 86, died in her sleep at her home in
Hastings-on-Hudson on March 23, 2024. Daughter of Jacob and Eva Segal,
Roberta grew up in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago and attended the
Chicago public schools. She spent her childhood devouring library books
and studying ballet, performing Swan Lake at the Lyric Opera House and
cartwheels at the all-city basketball championship at Chicago Stadium.

Roberta graduated from Radcliffe College and New York University School
of Law. Upon graduation she was hired as an attorney in the New York
regional office of the Securities and Exchange Commission. By her late
20s she had been promoted to assistant regional administrator,
supervising 50 members of the SEC's enforcement staff. After working as
an associate at a Wall Street law firm that declined to admit a woman
into its all-male partnership, she joined Rogers & Wells as its first
female partner in 1972.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter nominated her to be a Commissioner of
the SEC. After her confirmation by the Senate, Roberta became the first
female commissioner in the agency's history. Bucking the prevailing
sentiment of her fellow Commissioners and the SEC staff, she insisted
that the agency have a sound statutory basis for its regulations and
enforcement actions, publishing eighteen dissenting opinions in her
tenure at the Commission. She later returned to private practice as a
partner at Rogers & Wells and then Kelley, Drye & Warren while also
serving, from 1986 to 2022, as a full-time professor at Brooklyn Law School.

She was a prolific scholar, publishing books and scores of articles
on financial regulation and corporate law, and lectured as a visiting
scholar at universities in Beijing, Bologna, Frankfurt, London,
Melbourne, Paris, Shanghai, Seattle and Sydney. During her service as
the first female director of the New York Stock Exchange (1983-1989),
its annual report one year featured a group photograph of the directors
in which Roberta -- at 5'1" wearing heels and sporting a white blazer --
stood out among seventeen taller men wearing dark business suits. She
also served on the boards of a publicly owned chemical company, a mutual
insurance company, and many not-for-profit organizations.

Throughout her career, Roberta mentored younger attorneys and law school
students, especially encouraging women to succeed in the profession.
Roberta loved the ballet, theater and opera and was an avid reader and
traveler, visiting all 50 states and dozens of foreign countries,
particularly in Europe and Asia, where she visited stock exchanges and
rang the opening bell (or in Vietnam, the opening gong) as an honored
Wall Street emissary.

Roberta is predeceased by her first husband, Paul Karmel, with whom she
had four children: Philip (Barbara Landress), Solomon (Martine Smets),
Jonathan, and Miriam (Daniel Emery). She is also predeceased by her
second husband David Harrison (father of Andy and Rachel). She is
survived by her sister Phyllis Kaplan. Roberta was a devoted mother to
her children and their spouses and loving grandmother to Jacob, Anna,
Juliette, Paul, Owen, Ben, Elijah, Neoma, Aviv, and Jillian. Roberta's
homemade matzo ball soup, gefilte fish and brisket had legendary status,
at least within her own family.

[Published by The New York Times on March 26, 2024.]