Diana Byer gets to her studio on East 39th Street at 7 in the morning, every morning. She first catches up on paperwork then teaches her ballet company from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Then she rehearses the company from 11:45 a.m. until 4.

From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., she teaches children classes. And after completing some more paperwork, Byer finally heads home.

“It’s a very long day,” she said. “But for any small arts organization in a major city, the artistic director has very long days.”

Byer is the founder and artistic director of the New York Theatre Ballet, a company that performs classic and original ballet for adults and families and teaches ballet for children. Founded in 1978, the company has become known for its programs, such as the LIFT Community Service Program, that gives scholarships to kids who may not be able to afford ballet classes.

LIFT has been in effect for 24 years and is an outreach program that goes to shelters around the city for kids who are homeless or at risk. The children audition and up to 30 kids each year are awarded scholarships to help them enroll in the Ballet School NY, part of the New York Theatre Ballet. Byer said children also get clothing, mentoring and tutoring, whatever the individual child needs.

“It’s more than just getting ballet lessons, the whole child is addressed,” said the New Jersey native. LIFT also has a year-round Study Program. “We address the needs of a child on an individual basis. And the children are integrated into our regular classes, there isn’t a special class for scholarship students.”

Byer said that she sees a lot of talented young people come through her program and is currently working on raising money to send a 12-year-old boy to private school. “He’s extraordinarily talented,” she said. Because of the scholarship program, Byer said Ballet School NY is able to give talented kids the right tools to make it in dance.

“And there is a lot of talent out there. The children and the parents can’t begin to address their future because dancing lessons and music lessons and art lessons, all those things, are very expensive,” she said. “So we’re able to offer this program for talented dancers.”

Other programs include one-hour shows for children and family audiences and the company shows new and classic works by choreographers such as Antony Tudor, Richard Alston and Jerome Robbins. Performances are held at Florence Gould Hall on 55 East 59th Street. “We also identify emerging young choreographers and produce their ballets as well, we call it Legends and Visionaries,” she said.

Byer attended Julliard and received her principal dance training from Antony Tudor and Margaret Craske. While Craske trained her, Craske asked Byer to help with fellow students who were having difficulties, which led to Byer’s teaching.

However, she still dances in walk-on and acting roles to what she refers to as the “old lady roles.” She appears in Antony Tudor’s Judgment of Paris and she plays the wicked fairy Caraboss in their Sleeping Beauty performance.

Byer is on the board of directors for the Dance Notation Bureau and she has been a guest faculty instructor at institutions such as Cornell University, New York University and the Cecchetti Society of Canada in Toronto.

Though the New York Theatre Ballet has been around for an impressive 33 years, Byer hopes for improved funding to continue expanding the program for many more years to come. Lately Byer said it’s been difficult to get people to come to shows since many are distracted by technology or limited money. But with her commitment, the show will go on.

“Ballet will never go away, it’s one of the universal art forms,” she said. “It will always be here.”

By David Gibbons

Photo By Bess Adler

To say that Avenues is a grand scheme with the potential for revolutionizing education as we know it would be akin to calling the Empire State a tall building.

Students at this brand-new, for-profit private school will experience language immersion in Mandarin and Spanish from age 3. During their 15 years at the school, they’ll study history and culture in a multi-year survey called the World Course; they’ll be required to concentrate in a personal area of interest—academic, artistic or athletic—through a college-major-like program called Avenues Mastery. They’ll take multiple trips abroad and benefit from local institutional partnerships as well as integration of advanced learning technologies.

There’s much more—all of it spelled out on the website, www.avenues.org, which reads like a detailed blueprint for the global school of the future—part practical handbook, part idealistic manifesto.

The brains behind Avenues is Chris Whittle, the bow-tied media mogul famous for reviving a moribund Esquire magazine in the 1980s then founding Channel One News, which offered free TV (with ads) to schools. Whittle reinvented himself as an educational entrepreneur, starting Edison Schools in 1992 along with former Yale president Benno C. Schmidt Jr., who also heads the team at Avenues. Edison may have fallen short of Whittle’s most optimistic projections, but it is acknowledged as the pioneer of the charter school movement.

For his next start-up, Whittle amassed $75 million from private equity and his own pocket, introducing Avenues in 2011 as an “idea whose time had come.” The school’s flagship location, a beautifully renovated former warehouse on 10th Avenue in Chelsea, bordering on the Highline Park, will eventually house 1,600 students, from preschool through 12th grade. A second campus will open in Beijing in 2014, a third in São Paulo in 2015 and so on, with the ultimate goal of 20 campuses worldwide within a decade.

“We are up to speed to the degree we planned it,” says Gardner Dunnan, academic dean and head of the Upper School. Dunnan, a former headmaster of the Dalton School, was instrumental in developing and implementing Whittle’s plan as well as recruiting a best-and-brightest roster that includes Co-Heads of School Ty Tingley and Skip Mattoon, who ran Exeter and Hotchkiss, respectively.

“The leadership team all came here because it’s a new school of thought,” says Dunnan. “It isn’t like going to run another school; we’ve all done that. This is something entirely different.

“We’re looking at current best practices and transferring some of that, but we’re also inventing new methods and approaches on our own. Chris Whittle is a brilliant entrepreneur, and he works harder than anyone I know. But the key is his rare capacity to entertain a really good vision, to pay strict attention to the details and yet not be a micromanager, and to really elicit all of the talents of his team.”

Word got out quickly in the pedagogical world; Avenues received more than 4,500 applications for 125 initial teaching positions. The school will also share its riches through professional development workshops. And, after a one-year test run, the World Course, along with its invaluable database, will be made available to all takers at no cost.

By Felipe Cabrera

Derek Aucoin grew up watching the Expos as a child. He idolized players like Steve Rogers and Andre Dawson.

In July, he drove to Cooperstown to see Andre Dawson inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“When I was 10, I got to meet Andre Dawson,” Aucoin said. “That was what changed my life.”

Aucoin, 40, is currently director of player development for the Baseball Center NYC, which he co-founded 10 years ago. He coaches teams and works with young players. Aucoin was born in 1970 in Lachine, Quebec. He is single and has been living in New York for 12 years. Aucoin was a member of the 1988 Canadian Junior Olympic Baseball team. He was in the Montreal Expos’ and the Mets’ systems for 10 seasons and played in two Major League games.

Derek Aucoin of the Baseball Center NYC has introduced kids to Yankees like Derek Jeter and Mariana Rivera

There are hundreds of players on the waiting list to be on his leagues for 8 to 15 year olds, according to the center’s website. His motto is “game ready,” a phrase he asks his players to keep in mind both on and off the field. One of Aucoin’s main goals is to teach his players the skills and self-confidence that it takes to succeed in life.

“Basically, the object of the business is to provide a safe environment where children can feel like they’re appreciated,” Aucoin said. Aucoin also runs camps and clinics through the center. Yankee stars such as Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera have each made appearances at his camps and clinics.

Aucoin believes professional athletes can provide a positive influence in the lives of young people, especially underprivileged youths. Something as minor as shaking hands with a Major Leaguer can provide the motivation that might eventually lead to achievement. Aucoin is involved with a program through the Major League Baseball Players Association that allows kids to meet former players.

“I actually did one [program] in Central Park, which was awesome,” Aucoin said. “Two hundred and fifty kids got to meet four former Yankees.”

Aucoin has previously helped organize fundraisers for the Mario Lemieux Foundation, the Pat Tillman Foundation and Helping Hands. He also created a program for a group of 28 autistic children with the New York Center for Autism Charter School.

“Derek took on the challenge two years ago to provide a weekly baseball instruction program on-site at our school,” Moira Cray, director of transitions and community outreach for the autism school, wrote in a testimonial letter. “He worked from a belief that everyone can benefit from learning to play baseball, and the program has been an unqualified success beyond our wildest hopes.”

Aucoin feels fortunate to still be involved with baseball.

“I’m just blessed to be able to do this,” Aucoin said. “What baseball gives me is this opportunity.”

By Rochana Rapkins

Upper West Side entrepreneur Nora Lavori purchased a crumbling building at 100 W. 80th St. in the late ’70s, when New York City real estate was at a low point. Asked what gave her the confidence to do it, she laughs.

“I was young,” she said.

Nora Lavori bought and preserved 100 W. 80th St., opened The Culture Center and is a co-founder of the Columbus Ave. Business Improvement District.

At the time, the Bryn Mawr College grad was a lawyer specializing in domestic relations, women’s issues and real estate. She was also the author of Living Together, Married or Single: Your Legal Rights. But when she and business partner David Sterling saw the opportunity to purchase the 100-year-old building that faces the American Museum of Natural History, they jumped on it.

“I ended up owning this historic property that was in derelict condition, as much of the Upper West Side buildings were,” said Lavori. “We brought it back to life.”

In addition to having served as one-time president of the Women’s City Club of New York, an organization established in 1915 to promote women’s suffrage and good government, Lavori launched The Culture Center in 1990. Housed inside the building she owns, the center hosts events designed to promote cultural exchanges and is also available for special events.

Lavori, who declined to give her age, is also a founding member of the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District, which has organized tree plantings, sanitation efforts, holiday lightings and fundraising events.

“We brought Madison Ave. quality retailers to the UWS,” she said, “and that is something that has persisted over time.”

When she is not wearing one of her multiple hats, Lavori enjoys strolling around Central Park, popping into the New York Philharmonic and the ballet, sampling local eateries and attending events at the Bard Graduate Center on 86th Street. And she is a regular at the New-York Historical Society and the Natural History Museum, which should come as no surprise. Even as a child in public school on Staten Island, she was interested in historic architecture, and after winning an essay contest on historic preservation, she was awarded a prize from Mayor Abe Beame.

It was this love of history that motivated her purchase of the building that is now home to six retail shops and apartment rentals overlooking Central Park.

“What drove my interest was the quality of the historic structures,” she said. “They are so beautiful and so incredibly well-constructed. That is what motivated me—to see if I could find a new life for these beautiful buildings.”