USTA Eastern announces 2025-26 Board of Directors

Olga Harvey of the USTA Eastern – Southern Region is the outgoing President of the USTA Eastern Board of Directors. 

Harvey brings over 20  years of business experience to her current role as Chief Operating Officer at the Women's Sports Foundation. She got her start in the sports and philanthropy field at the New York Junior Tennis & Learning (NYJTL), where she managed Marketing, Special Events and Development. Prior to NYJTL, she served as a Vice President at Daymon Worldwide, a global retail brand development firm. In 2019, Harvey was recognized as one of the “notable women in the business of sports” by Crain’s New York, and in 2022, she was named as one of the Sports Business Journal’s Power Players in Women’s Sports.  She is a member of the Gatorade Women’s Advisory Board.

Harvey has served on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors since 2015 and began her term as President beginning in 2023. She previously held the positions of Secretary and Vice President, as well the Southern Region President. She also served two terms on the National Diversity and Inclusion Committee.  

Harvey is a native of Moscow, Russia. She received a business degree from Cornell University, where she also played D1 tennis. Harvey was the team captain and holds a 21-0 record in Ivy League singles play. She was a two-time Ivy League Player of the year and was inducted into the Cornell Athletic Hall of Fame. Harvey is married to Dave Harvey and is a proud mother of two boys - Max (16) and Alex (13).

Michael Pavlides is nominated to serve as the Regional Council Director, Long Island on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors. 

Pavlides is a retired educator, having worked for the Massapequa U.F.S.D. for 33 years. He is the current Massapequa Varsity Tennis Coach of both the boys and girls tennis teams, a position he has held since 1997. Pavlides has run a “no-cut program” over the course of his entire tenure. He has been named the USTA Long Island Region Nassau Coach of the Year, the USTA Eastern Virginia & Chuck Landis High School Coach of the Year, and the National Federation of State High School Associations Coach of the Year for New York. He recently concluded his second term on the National High School Committee. 

Pavlides has served as Long Island’s Regional Council Director since 2023, and he held the same role for a year in 2016. He started his association with USTA Long Island Region in 2008, when he was asked to be the High School Tennis liaison.

Sharon Simmonds is nominated to serve as Regional Council Director, Metro on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors.  

Simmonds is an erudite New York City Department of Education school administrator. She is a very well-read individual in both the theoretical and practicum of individuals with special needs. She works in tangent with the Adult Career and Continuing Education Services – Vocational Rehabilitation (ACCESS –VR) as well as with the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD) to assist students transition to post-secondary education, employment (including supported employment), supported and independent living and community participation.

Simmonds is a tennis enthusiast who started playing the game at the Jamaica (W.I.) Lawn Tennis Association (JLTA) before migrating to the USA where she continued playing at Queens College and with other local Queens and Long Island programs. Sharon is Net Generation-trained and Safe Sport-certified. She is a former captain of the Long Island Burgess 7.0 women’s doubles team, co-captain of the Liber-T Queens Women’s 7.0 doubles team, and one of the organizers of the Liber-T community tennis association summer tennis program. Simmonds is a member of several teams in Long Island and Queens, and she participates in the USTA Eastern recreational leagues.

Simmonds’s unadulterated enjoyment of tennis and her desire to grow the game led to her volunteering at various events throughout the USTA Eastern Metro region. In 2020, USTA Eastern presented Simmonds with its Metro Region Volunteer of the Year Award. Simmonds has served as Metro’s Regional Council Director since 2023.

Katrina Campbell is nominated to serve as the Regional Council Director, New Jersey on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors.

Campbell is the Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer for the International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian and refugee resettlement organization. She is a licensed attorney with degrees from Harvard Law School and Hampton University. She has consulted for many international organizations, served in ethics roles for the United Nations, and was an ethics and investigations expert for NAVEX Global, a leading provider of ethics hotlines. She began her career as a lawyer with McGuire Woods law firm and Capital One. Campbell has traveled throughout the United States and to dozens of other countries to serve clients and colleagues at all levels. 

Campbell has served as a member of USTA Eastern’s board since 2021 and is beginning her first term as New Jersey’s Regional Council Director. She is an active 3.0 league and club tennis player and proud mother to a ninth grader and kindergarten teacher.

Peter Green is nominated to serve as the Regional Council Director, Northern on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors.  

Green currently works at Sportime Schenectady, where he runs tennis programs, gives private and group lessons and teaches at camps. He is also the Head Boy’s and Girls’ Tennis Coach at the Albany Academies. Both teams are reigning Colonial Council champions. The Girls are also Class A Sectional Champions. Before working at Sportime, Green worked at Capital Region Tennis and Fitness until its closing, where he ran the USTA’s Northern Region Competition Training Center.  

Green has over 40 years of experience running junior and adult tennis tournaments at all levels, from 10 and Under beginner tournaments to USTA National Opens. He has also managed over 250 junior and adult USTA team tennis teams for every age group and level of player. Beyond running tournaments and teams, Green has also been a trainer for the USTA Schools Program and the USTA Community Development Tennis Program and has been involved with the Northern Region Junior Council. Additionally, he has served as an Eastern coach at the USTA Zone Team Championships, leading two teams to championship titles.

Green is beginning his first term as Northern’s Regional Council Director. He currently serves as the Vice Chairperson of Eastern’s Junior Competition Committee. He has received numerous honors from the organization, including being named the USTA Northern Region Volunteer of the Year, the USTA Eastern Tournament Director of the Year, and the USTA Eastern 10 & Under Tournament Director of the Year. 

Green is a graduate of Syracuse University. He is a lifetime tennis player and played high school tennis at Milne in Albany.

Peter Krasinski is nominated to serve as the Regional Council Director, Southern on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors.

Krasinski is the High Performance Director at Matchpoint Tennis in Goshen, N.Y. Since 2017, he has overseen the club's growth by 300 percent in tennis memberships and class participation. At the facility he has been one of the lead instructors in organizing the Wildcat and Crusader Crush program, an initiative that introduced second through fifth graders to tennis. He also established an adult clinic group that grew 10 times its original size and expanded to four days a week. Krasinski is passionate about the growth of the game both on and off the court and has made strides in working with coaches to improve the quality of tennis coaching.

Krasinski is beginning his first term as Southern’s Regional Council Director. He has participated in every level of USTA products from junior competition to adult leagues.

Lydia Varon is nominated to serve as the Regional Council Director, Western on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors.

Varon is a Human Resources Business Partner for L3Harris Technologies, which provides end-to-end technology solutions connecting the space, air, land, sea and cyber domains in the interest of national security. She has been with the company for just over five years, working within both the tactical radio business and most recently the space telescopes and satellites business. The organization is located in Rochester, N.Y.

Varon is beginning her first term as Western’s Regional Council Director. For almost a decade, she has worked with the Western Region in various capacities. She has served as a Member at Large on the Western Region Committee and has represented their members on the Eastern Adult Competition Committee. She has also been an active league player and captain, a social tennis event coordinator and a volunteer with many of the region’s events and activities. She was awarded the Western Region Volunteer of The Year award in 2020.

Varon earned her undergraduate degree in psychology at Mount Holyoke College and her master’s degree in industrial and labor relations at Cornell University.

Joe Ceriello of the USTA Eastern – Metro Region is nominated to serve as Member at Large on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors.

Ceriello is a 20+ year tennis industry veteran who served in key roles during his 13-year tenure with the United States Tennis Association (USTA), including professional tournament operations, US Open player services and ticketing operations. He led and opened the USTA's player development unit in NYC and later managed many of the USTA's national youth marketing brands.

He currently serves as the Executive Director of Kings County Tennis League (KCTL), an NJTL chapter in Brooklyn, New York. In this role he oversees KCTL’s grassroots service model that creates a tight-knit community of families, staff and volunteers of different socio-economic classes connected through free tennis and educational programming. KCTL's offerings are provided directly on-site within NYCHA communities.

Ceriello graduated from Binghamton University with a B.A. in rhetoric and literature and later earned a master’s degree in music from the Boston Conservatory. He also received a master’s in business administration from the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College in Manhattan, where he now teaches as an adjunct lecturer instructing the next generation of nonprofit and commercial marketers.

Allon Lifshitz of the USTA Eastern – Metro Region is nominated to serve as Member at Large on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors.  

Lifshitz is a partner at Cohen & Gresser, where he focuses on white collar crime, complex civil litigation, and antitrust cases. Before joining the firm, he served for 14 years as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, including as Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division and, previously, Chief of the Organized Crime and Gangs Section. Earlier in his career, Lifshitz was a law clerk to the Honorable Nicholas G. Garaufis and an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Lifshitz begins his first term as a Member at Large on the USTA Eastern Board. He is currently serving nationally in his third term as Chair of the USTA Constitution and Rules Committee. He was previously Vice Chair of that Committee, a member of USTA Eastern’s Charter and Bylaws Committee, and Secretary of USTA Eastern’s Metro Region Board, among other positions.

Lifshitz is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two children, and plays tennis at the Prospect Park Tennis Center and Fort Greene Park.

Claude D. Okin of the USTA Eastern – Long Island Region is nominated to serve as Member at Large on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors.  

Okin has been working in tennis clubs since age 12 and is the President & CEO of Sportime Clubs, LLC. Sportime’s sites include its flagship, Sportime Randall's Island, the largest indoor tennis club in the world. It is also the home of the John McEnroe Tennis Academy, a brand that Sportime operates, in partnership with the tennis legend, in New York City, on Long Island and in Westchester. Sportime clubs currently offer 192 tennis courts across 15 locations, with additional sites in development. Sportime serves roughly 70,000 players and students, and employs as many as 1,000 staff members, including more than 200 tennis coaches. Additionally, Okin is an Advisory Board member of the Johnny Mac Tennis Project. The charity, an NJTL chapter, partners with Sportime to bring free tennis to more than 4,000 elementary school kids from NYC’s most under-resourced neighborhoods. Prior to founding Sportime in 1994, Okin was an eighth grade English teacher and Dean of Students at the St. Luke’s School in Greenwich Village and Head of School at the Hampton Day School in Bridgehampton, N.Y. 

Okin previously served on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors from 2009-2015, as a Member at Large and then for two terms as Secretary. He returned as a Member at Large in 2023.

Okin played on the men’s teams at Vassar and New York University and holds a B.A. in both English and psychology from Stony Brook University. Still an avid player, he resides in Amagansett, N.Y. with his wife Hana and their boston terrier, Cookie.

Ronald Thomas of the USTA Eastern – New Jersey Region is nominated to serve as Member at Large on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors.

Thomas is Owner and President of THE MJK GROUP, which consists of two businesses: a national supplier of  architectural and engineering equipment to union building trade and technical schools and a wine aerator and wine accessory business which is marketed under the trademarked name AeroVin to wineries, premium wine retailers and wine distributors nationally. He is a board member of The Carnegie Business Collaborative, a business networking group located in Princeton, N.J., a member of the Capital Region Minority Chamber of Commerce located in Trenton, N.J., and a member of the Princeton-Mercer Chamber of Commerce located in Princeton, NJ. He is also the Owner and President of EB HACKERS LLC, a local New Jersey community tennis association.

Thomas begins his first term as a Member at Large on the USTA Eastern Board of Directors. He is currently Vice Chair of the New Jersey Region Executive Council, Chair of USTA Eastern Tournament Subcommittee, and a member of the Eastern Adult Competition Committee, where he has served since 2015. He is also the Communication Chair of the New Jersey Region Council and moderates the region’s Facebook group.