The industries that drive New York — and the city itself — are at a major crossroads. What kind of city do we want to be? How will business drive the future of housing, work, health care, climate change, technology, arts and transportation in the Big Apple?
Remaking the area’s transportation infrastucture for the next generation PAGE 10
By Judy Messina
Nearly 15 years ago, a Supreme Court decision made same-sex marriage legal in the United States, and in 2020 the court a rmed that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Crain’s New York Business will dive deep into the innovations, challenges and pivotal developments that will inspire the city’s reinvention over the next 50 years. Our first topic, transportation, New York City’s life force, begins on Page 10.
Dramatic changes are lifting New York airports out of the 1990s PAGE 12
Yet when it comes to building a family, LGBTQ+ couples can struggle to obtain insurance coverage for the costly procedures required, from egg donation to in vitro fertilization, surrogacy and adoption. Only seven states, including New York, require insurance companies to provide such coverage irrespective of a couple's sex or sexual orientation. In New York City, however, local government employees are among those battling for equal access to fertility bene ts.
BY THE NUMBERS
1,000
Members of the LGBTQ+ community surveyed, of which 68% said they were unable to access fertility coverage offered by their workplace.
Progyny
SOURCE:
Still, many private employers in the region, and large companies in particular,
Transportation leaders share predictions for the future of getting around PAGE 13-14 See BENEFITS on Page 29
“Every one
By Julianne Cuba
e city panel that sets the cost of rent-stabilized apartments voted June 17 during yet another raucous meeting to approve a 2.75% increase for one-year leases signed on or after Oct. 1.
Inside a Hunter College auditorium on the Upper East Side, outside of which dozens of armed cops guarded the doors and protestors denounced the annual procedure as a sham, the nine-member Rent Guidelines Board voted 5 to 4 in favor of a 2.75% increase on one-year leases and a 5.25% increase on twoyear leases through Sept. 30, 2025 — a change that will a ect tens of thousands of New Yorkers living in the city’s roughly 1 million regulated units across the ve boroughs.
e increase for the third year in a row comes after a preliminary vote on April 30, when members endorsed rent hikes of up to 4.5%
land, during which members of the public could submit testimony and weigh in on the proposal.
Ahead of June 17’s scheduled vote, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams issued a statement urging the board to “limit increases” amid the multitude of crises plaguing the city — the housing shortage, the a ordability crisis, homelessness and rising evictions.
Mayor Eric Adams similarly expressed concern about a potentially exorbitant increase, but Hizzoner declined to back a rent freeze or a rollback that has been pushed by tenant advocates.
“We have to nd a middle ground. I know New Yorkers are hurting,” Adams said during an unrelated press conference June 17. “We want a low end if there’s an increase.”
Tenant advocacy group the Legal Aid society, however, went a step further, calling for a “rent freeze” for all tenants in rent-stabilized units.
“It’s distressing that the RGB did not follow its own data — which clearly supported the need for higher rent adjustments to offset skyrocketing property taxes and insurance premiums.”
Joseph
Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association
on one-year leases and up to 6.5% on two-year leases. e increases follow a series of public hearings in every borough but Staten Is-
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For their part, landlords of rent-stabilized buildings say it’s imperative that they bring in some extra cash ow in order to pay for rising property taxes, insurance, mortgages and maintenance costs.
In April, the RGB issued a report
highlighting that the so-called Price Index of Operating Costs for buildings containing rent-stabilized apartments had jumped by 3.9%. Real estate taxes rose by 3.2%, the report said, and maintenance work by 3.5%.
“It’s distressing that the RGB did not follow its own data — which clearly supported the need for higher rent adjustments to o set skyrocketing property taxes and insurance premiums,” said Joseph Strasburg, president of the Rent Stabilization Association, a pro-landlord group.
Landlords of market-rate units
are not subject to the same guidelines and can raise rents in their buildings without the board’s approval.
Albeit much-maligned by advocates across the spectrum — landlords and tenants included — the increase still falls within the ballpark of the 3% hike the board approved last year for one-year leases and the 2.75% increase for the rst year of two-year leases, rising to 3.2% in the following year. Earlier that spring in 2023, the board had initially oated a whopping 16% rent hike.
In 2022, the board approved the
By Eddie Small
Laurence “Larry” Gluck, the founder and longtime leader of major New York landlord Stellar Management, has passed away at age 71 after a battle with ALS.
Gluck died June 13, according to Stellar, which released a statement that praised him as “a visionary leader in the real estate industry.” It stressed that Stellar will contin-
son will remain at the helm as well.
largest increase in nearly a decade — 3.25% on one-year leases and 5% on two-year leases — which signaled a dramatic shift from when former Mayor Bill de Blasio was in o ce. Board members, all of whom are appointed by the mayor, froze rents for three years under his tenure, including during the Covid-19 pandemic. e vote to raise rents comes as the city kicks o its ambitious City of Yes housing plan, which aims to loosen archaic zoning regulations in order to allow more housing to be built nearly everywhere in the city.
1 Manhattan West
Stellar will continue to be family-run, with Gluck’s wife, Sandra, and his oldest daughter, Amanda, overseeing investments, management and operations at the company.
ue to be family-run, with Gluck’s wife, Sandra, and his oldest daughter, Amanda, overseeing investments, management and operations at the company. Managing Partners Adam Roman, Matthew Lembo and Ryan Jack-
Gluck was born in 1953 and founded NoMad-based Stellar Management almost 40 years ago. He and developer Steve Witko , whom he worked with at the law rm Dreyer & Traub, partnered to start Stellar in 1985 and settled on its name by combining letters from both of their rst names. e rm initially focused on purchasing and constructing apartment buildings in Washington Heights. Witko left the company in 1997 to start his own rm, the Witko Group, while Gluck continued to lead Stellar. e rm would often buy properties in the rent-subsidized Mitchell-Lama program and deregulate them, which led to multiple controversies and clashes with tenants at complexes including Independence Plaza in Tribeca and, perhaps most famously, Riverton
Houses in Harlem.
Stellar purchased Riverton for $135 million in 2005 with plans to convert more than half of the 1,230 apartments to market-rate units by 2011, but this e ort ran into multiple problems amid the Great Recession. e company ultimately lost the building to foreclosure in 2010 after defaulting on its $225 million loan.
is did not spell the end for Stellar, however, with Gluck and the rm enjoying a bit of a comeback in the 2010s. He took on the troubled Tivoli Gardens residential project in Brooklyn with the support of the city, for instance, which provided Stellar with more than $40 million worth of support in exchange for a pledge to keep the development in the Mitchell-Lama program for 30 more years. e company also led a group that purchased a pair of adjacent SoHo properties in 2012 at 161 Sixth Ave. and 233 Spring St., which it developed into the o ce building now known as 1 SoHo Square.
But the company continued to spar in court with tenants in its residential buildings, with many in the later 2010s accusing Stellar of exaggerating the amount of work it did renovating apartments to justify taking them out of rent regulation.
Stellar’s portfolio now spans more than 12,000 apartments in more than 100 buildings, along with more than 1 million square feet of retail space, more than 2 million square feet of o ce space and more than 1 million square feet of developments in its pipeline.
By Aaron Elstein
Manhattan’s fractious Community Board 5 voted June 13 to oust the chairman who had been handed the gavel only three months ago, in a move that came minutes after members discovered that a convicted sex o ender serves on the board.
CB5’s fourth chairman in four months is Brad Sherburne, a 33-year-old architect. He replaced Samir Lavingia, who rose to the helm after a boardroom brawl in
“I’m con dent that the choppy seas are behind us and there’s open blue water ahead.”
March. Lavingia, 30, is the campaign coordinator at Open New York, a Silicon Valley-backed advocacy group that supports looser housing regulations and recently launched a political action arm. Called Abundant New York, the independent expenditure committee plans to aid candidates for o ce throughout the state.
Several longtime CB5 leaders resigned earlier this year, com-
plaining that Lavingia and three other Open New York members on CB5 weren’t transparent about their a liation or motivations for joining. CB5 is among the most important of the city’s community boards, with a district covering much of Midtown. e community board’s recommendations about real estate development and policy matters are closely watched by public o cials. Earlier this month, e City reported that some of the recently departed CB5 leaders accepted $80,000 from an anonymous donor last year to hire an outside consultant for a zoning task force that met privately.
“I think we can all agree this has been a challenging year,”
Sherburne said shortly before the June 13 election.
Moments before the vote, some board members started quietly sharing a New York Post article reporting that CB5 member Charles Ny was convicted of molesting a 15-year-old boy in Great Britain 19 years ago and is listed on the New York Sex O ender Registry under his birth name, Charles Ghose. Manhattan Borough President
Mark Levine, who appoints community board members, referred the matter to the city Department of Investigation, the Post said. Ny told Crain’s his conviction was expunged in the U.K. and shared a British document that said he has “no convictions for disclosure.” He is classi ed as a low-level sex offender in New York, according to state court records.
Ny voted June 13 against Lavingia, who was gracious in defeat.
“I’m con dent that the choppy seas are behind us and there’s open blue water ahead,” Lavingia said immediately after the vote. “It’s been an honor to be the chair of Community Board 5 over the last three months and I’ll work with Brad to serve out the rest of my term and ensure a peaceful transition.”
But divisions among CB5 members were plainly evident at the June 13 board elections. e vote for treasurer was 23-22, with Lavingia casting the nal ballot. e votes for board secretary and rst vice chair position were both 24-21. Sherburne defeated Lavingia 24-20 with one abstention.
Sherburne has served on CB5 for two years and is an architect at CetraRuddy, the rm that designed 1 Madison, the slender 50-story glass residential tower at East 23rd Street. He said he looks forward to building consensus on the many matters before the board, such as Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes housing plan.
“I think I can help end the division that has distracted our board and quell the controversy of the recent months so we can get back to work for our community,” he
told CB5 members minutes before the voice vote.
As weary voters led out after the four-hour meeting, CB5 member Zool Zulkowitz said he doesn’t see the rancor lifting anytime soon. Republican and Democratic party operatives have discovered the power of community boards to in uence elected o cials, he said, and are investing to remake them.
“American politics as we’ve come to know and hate it has come to this level of city government,” Zulkowitz said.
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The West 138th Street building may be a touchpoint for what can go right and wrong in ‘dorms for adults’
Co-living, the roommate-pairing service, o ers a double-barreled promise. Tenants can enjoy reduced rents by paying just for rooms rather than entire apartments. And landlords can rake in more revenue by squeezing more paying customers into buildings.
But the bankruptcy this month of nine-year-old Common Living, the country’s largest co-living provider and one backed by a notable $113 million in venture capital, suggests the business still has some kinks to work out.
Indeed, for all the praise the industry has won for o ering short-term and a ordable housing options in a tight market, co-living has also come under re from tenants over poor sanitation, bad chemistry and lax security.
And some critics worry that the renovations necessary to create “dorms for adults,” which tend to be located in Black and brown neighborhoods, provide landlords with cover to skirt the 2019 rent reform law. A major construction project can be a rationale to remove a site from New York’s rent-stabilization program.
One thing seems clear, however: As creditors pick over Common’s remains, a rival rm, Outpost Club, is using the opportunity to grow. e Queens-based company snatched seven buildings away from Common in recent months by convincing landlords to go with it instead. And Outpost, whose CEO is Sergii Starostin, is now angling to acquire another 10 sites through Common’s Chapter 7 liquidation process.
e properties, which have functioned as co-living spaces for years, are thus touchpoints for the industry’s evolution that also may reveal clues about where it’s headed.
Among them is 125 W. 138th St., a building on a block that has played a major role in the Black cultural, political and ecclesiastic history of Harlem.
About 15 years ago, the ve-story Italianate building had boarded-up windows and seemed vacant, based on old photos. Developer Garbo & Co. bought the site from its longtime owners for $3.2 million and began renovating the rent-stabilized property in 2014, according to Department of Buildings records.
ough No. 125 does not appear to have been an o cial co-living space in the years afterwards, its units, all four-bedrooms, were designed to share with roommates, according to old ads.
In 2020 Garbo sold the building to the developer Duke Properties for $6.3 million. In 2021 Duke hired Common, which could not be reached for comment, to operate the building. But tenants complained about rats and leaks during Common’s tenure, records show, and Duke, which did not return a call, dropped Common for Outpost two years later.
Today, rooms at the building, known as the Clark House, start at $1,550 a month, according to Outpost’s website.
This 8-story, 134-unit condo, which spans the length of the block, is called the Rennie in homage to the previous structure on the site, the Renaissance Ballroom and Casino, a cultural hub during the mid-20th century Harlem Renaissance. A Black-owned in-house basketball team, the Rens, often played between musical acts. But the complex, which was never awarded landmark status, closed in 1979 and fell into disrepair. In 1997 the Abyssinian Baptist Church purchased the low-slung site for $3.7 million and in 2014 unloaded it for $10 million to BRP Companies, a Black-owned development rm co-founded by Geoff Flournoy and Meredith Marshall. The Rennie, which includes tax-abated units, expects to pull in $105 million for its 106 market-rate studio to three-bedroom homes. (The rest of the apartments are income-restricted affordable housing.) But Flournoy and Marshall still have several sponsor units to sell, six years after marketing began. The least expensive unit for sale in mid-June was a studio asking $550,000, according to StreetEasy.
132
One of the oldest and most in uential Black parishes in the country, Abyssinian Baptist Church, was founded in 1808 and developed this Gothic-style site in 1923 after a string of previous sites in other parts of Manhattan. This included one on Thompson Street in Greenwich Village, which in the mid-19th century was part of “Little Africa.”
The pastors of the Protestant congregation have included Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the rst African American to be elected to the City Council in 1941 and the namesake of the street at the corner that was once Seventh Avenue. Powell, a Democrat, later represented Harlem in Congress for 14 terms.
A subsequent Pastor, Calvin O. Butts III, founded the Abyssinian Development Corp. in 1989, a real estate force behind schools, stores and affordable housing that has developed $600 million worth of Harlem projects. Butts, who died in 2022, has yet to be replaced. Designated a city landmark in 1993, the 19,700-square-foot column-free, stained glass-adorned space is a regular stop for politicians courting the Black vote. In 2022, the Abyssinian also hosted a packed memorial service for former fashion editor Andre Leon Talley. Sunday services, which are livestreamed, generally start at 10 a.m. and last two hours.
W. 138TH ST.
This well-kept 5-story prewar building and similar offerings at Nos. 131 and 133 make up a 25-unit rental complex owned by Janus Property Co., a Harlem-based developer that principal Scott Metzner founded in 1989. These three sites, which had been seized by the city for tax delinquencies, were some of Metzner’s earliest holdings, having been acquired in 1990. The city appears to have enlisted Janus to rehab them into affordable housing and provided public nancing for the project. Units in the buildings, which also enjoy J-51 tax breaks, are rent-stabilized. The other principal of Janus is Jerry Salama, who formerly worked as a commissioner at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. In 2022 Janus completed a $700 million, 350,000-square-foot life sciences center at the site of a former bakery on West 126th Street. The science center is part of a 1.2 million-square-foot of ce campus Janus owns in the Columbia University-adjacent Manhattanville enclave. Ragtime composer Scott Joplin reportedly brie y lived at No. 131 in 1916.
The locally proli c Abyssinian Development Corp. created this 17-unit market-rate condo, which has oneto three-bedroom units, in 2013. The project hauled in $7.5 million in sales, according to its offering plan. One of the principals who guided it was lawyer and nonpro t developer Sheena Wright, who today serves as a deputy mayor in the administration of Mayor Eric Adams. The building’s of cial name, the Odell Clark Place Condominiums, pays tribute to an advisor to Powell. The block on which the condo is located has been known as Odell Clark Place since 1980. (There is another Odell Clark-named condo around the corner between West 138th and West 139th streets.) A three-bedroom penthouse at No. 108 is currently being offered for $1.4 million.
The ve-story stoop-fronted brownstone that was seized by the city for back taxes in the 1970s and has appeared abandoned in more recent years is newly revitalized after several renovations, a few owners and a couple of co-living providers. The prewar walk-up has 10 apartments, according to city records, but it is unclear how many people actually live at the address. In 2023 owner Duke Properties dropped manager Common Living, which was criticized for allowing rodents at the site, and hired Outpost Club, which like most co-living providers operates buildings but does not own them. Founded in 2001, NoHo-based Duke is headed by Albert Dweck, whose 500-unit portfolio includes small rentals in Upper Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, including other sites with co-living units, which can reportedly increase a building’s rent rolls by as much as 30%. “We have found a way to do what Common could not,” Starostin said in a statement. Dweck did not return a call for comment.
These two weedy sites served as parking lots for years and are currently fenced-off and vacant. In 2015 real estate investor Albert Rabizadeh acquired them for $2.8 million and of oaded the pair three years later for $3.8 million. Their buyer was the Lamb’s Center for Urban Ministry, a group linked to the Church of the Nazarene, according to the city register. The evangelical Protestant denomination is perhaps best known as the owner of the former Lamb’s Club at 130 W. 44th St. in Times Square, which it bought at auction for $500,000 in 1975 before leasing it in the mid2000s to the 76-room high-end Chatwal Hotel. Rev. Bruce Barnard appears to oversee real estate deals for the church, which has 120 locations in the metro area, and is seeking “other ways in which to develop Manhattan properties for non-pro t and religious work,” according to the church’s website. No building permits are yet on le for the West 138th Street properties.
This address actually applies to four side-by-side prewar properties that were combined as part of a 2007 condo conversion called The Savoy West. The 32-unit offering was from Tahl Propp Equities, a prominent Harlem landlord and developer headed by Joseph Tahl, who worked as an attorney for the Trump Organization in the 1990s, and Rodney Propp, a former investment banker. The building continues to bene t from J-51 property tax abatements given its status as a multifamily development that underwent capital improvements. Though the program expired in 2022, some apartments continue to receive the breaks. No. 1B, a one-bedroom on the market for $615,000, currently has a $322 monthly tax bill and will enjoy discounts until 2032. (Its common charges are $1,418 a month.) The City Council is now considering reinstating the J-51 program with a narrower scope for condos than the previous version. The brick-and-limestone site also contains four retail berths, which Tahl Propp controls. In 1987 the street was named for slain civil-rights leader Malcolm X. For about a century prior to that it was Lenox Avenue. And before Lenox it was Harlem Lane, a wide thoroughfare in a rural area popular with horse and buggy racers. When Gen. Ulysses S. Grant visited New York after emerging victorious in the Civil War, “one of his rst requests was to be taken out to Harlem Lane,” according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s report for the nearby St. Nicholas Historic District.
By Julianne Cuba
e city is taking Times Square's Margaritaville to court over tens of thousands in unpaid nes the once-troubled venue has racked up from a dozen noise complaints over the last two years, according to a new ling made public.
With the conclusion of the resort's foreclosure case not even a year behind it, and new ownership as a result of its auction sale in October, the iconic Jimmy Bu ett-
deploy a single speaker, mounted outside, on the North side of the awning to this business, near the wall/the end of the name display, playing music at the general public on the sidewalk, in order to attract attention to this business," said Queens resident Dietmar Detering, according to one of the summonses issued against the four-star hotel chain between West 41st and West 40th streets on Feb. 18, 2023 at about 7 pm.
Jimmy Buffett-themed resort at 560 Seventh Ave., which just opened in 2021, is now on the hook for $54,741 stemming from 12 noise complaints.
themed resort at 560 Seventh Ave., which just opened in 2021, is now on the hook for $54,741 stemming from 12 noise complaints lodged by one man between Sept. 21, 2022 and May 22, 2023, records show.
"I personally observed this bar
Detering is a well-known noisepollution vigilante who has made a name for himself — and the big bucks — traversing the city ling similar complaints against numerous bars and restaurants, many of them in Times Square. He told NBC News last year that he's made a living for himself pursuing the practice.
It's unclear how many total complaints — or how much money — Detering has made in his career as a citizen enforcer of loud music, or how many of them ultimately get dismissed.
In the case of the 32-story, 234room resort, which features two rooftop bars and a heated outdoor pool, however, the city did follow
through on at least a dozen of them, slapping the tropical oasis in the heart of bustling and boisterous Times Square with thousands of dollars in nes for excessive noise.
"Unreasonable noise from sound reproduction device," another one of Detering's complaints reads, which was led on Nov. 23, 2022, at 1:06 p.m.
Making matters worse, the Times Square resort, which had been in the middle of its foreclosure case, did not pay the nes or show up at its scheduled hearings to address the summonses, accruing additional penalties and prompting the city's top lawyer, Judge Sylvia Hinds-Radix, to le the complaint against the property on June 11.
Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for the city's law department, declined to comment on the speci c lawsuit against Margaritaville but said it's a "routine" way to "recover for non-payment of summonses."
e Times Square Margaritaville opened to much fanfare in 2021. It joined an expanding global chain fashioned after the late-Bu ett, a
singer-songwriter whose hits included "Cheeseburger in Paradise" and, of course, "Margaritaville." It's been considered the city's number one resort, according to TripAdvisor, and an abundance of glowing, albeit some tongue-in-cheek reviews.
But it wasn't long before it ran into trouble. Soho Properties bought the Seventh Avenue property for $62 million in 2014 — with a $57 million loan at the time from Philadelphia-based Arden Group — and later developed the 170,000square-foot building with Margari-
taville Hospitality Group, hotel builder Flintlock Construction Services and IMCMV Holdings, Crain's previously reported. Meanwhile, Arden had long been trying to foreclose on the resort, Crain's reported last year, and in October was able to take control of the property after making the sole bid — just $1,000 — at the auction.
Representatives for neither Arden or Soho Properties responded to requests for comment. And attempts by Crain's to reach the Margaritaville franchise were unsuccessful by press time.
Will masks, after all we’ve been through, be banned on the subway?
Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams are suddenly interested in the idea. Hochul, in particular, backed the concept of a ban after she said “a group donning masks took over a subway car, scaring riders and chanting things about Hitler and wiping out Jews.” What’s less clear is what incident she was actually referencing.
It’s plausible, in fact, she was con ating two separate incidents.
Hundreds of people leaving a Union Square pro-Palestinian rally last week headed into a subway station to get on downtown-bound trains. On one train, a man who was not wearing a mask led a small group in chanting “Raise your hands if you’re a Zionist” to other passengers, followed by, “ is is your chance to get out.”
was still here. He would’ve wiped all you out.”
But Hochul may have been reacting to a greater phenomenon: the protesters who increasingly wear masks in public. Begun as a Covid precaution, the practice is now common to avoid scrutiny from police and online harassment — or even the wrath of future employers. Doxxing is increasingly common, and pro-Palestinian protesters fear they will be put on blacklists for appearing in public in support of their cause. Hence, the masks.
New York passed a ban on face masks in public in the 19th century. e law was suspended in 2020 during the pandemic, and masks were mandated on the subway until September 2022. And before that, during the pandemic’s rst year, face masks were required when heading outdoors.
In another instance, video circulating on social media showed a confrontation where a man in Union Square — who was also unmasked — shouted, “I wish Hitler
Both Hochul and Adams would see an anti-mask measure as an anti-crime measure, a way to, theoretically, keep people from harassing others with a degree of impunity. But to restore that pre-2020 status quo, the state Legislature
would need to change the law. is isn’t likely to happen anytime soon: Lawmakers adjourned for the year and aren’t due back until January.
But even if Hochul had made this announcement earlier in the year, little could have been done. In a post-Covid world, mask bans don’t make sense and would be largely unenforceable. Hochul said that those wearing masks for health or religious reasons would be exempt — fair enough, but how would a police o cer determine when a mask is worn for a legitimate purpose? How to know what someone’s thinking or what their intentions might be?
Fears of Covid infection remain and there are commuters who wear masks as a safety precaution in the subway. ere are Muslims who cover their faces, too. What if a police o cer harasses one of these people for no good reason? How much capricious enforcement would there be? Do police even want to do this?
Antisemitism is a grave challenge. ere is no correlation,
though, between hatred of Jews and mask-wearing, and no evidence such a restriction would decrease anti-semitic language or attacks. Hochul is grasping at straws. is isn’t shocking, perhaps, coming from a governor who has been so politically discombobulated that she throttled congestion pricing less than a month away from its planned start date.
Just as there was no forethought given to what revenue would replace the new tolls in Manhattan, it’s doubtful Hochul has thought much about the implementation of a mask ban. She’s reacting to the news cycle, or maybe a few loud voices in her ear. Unfortunately, that’s become all-too-common these days.
Ross Barkan is a journalist and author in New York City.
By Caroline Spivack
A new bill before the City Council looks to dramatically reduce the nes for certain co-op and condo building owners who fail to comply with a landmark climate law seeking to restrict building emissions — and it’s gaining traction with a near majority backing the legislation.
Queens Councilwoman Linda Lee is pushing a bill that would soften penalties and emissions requirements for co-op and condo buildings that must comply with Local Law 97, which mandates buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to cut their greenhouse gas emissions with a series of escalating carbon caps. e proposal amounts to a signi cant rewrite of Local Law 97 that Lee’s o ce says would impact 10% of the 50,000 buildings covered by the climate law.
Under the bill, co-op and condo buildings would be able to count gardens and other green spaces as part of their square footage when calculating their emissions limits. e change would increase the amount of carbon those buildings are allowed to emit and e ectively mean owners would need to spend less on carbon-cutting retro ts to comply with the law.
“Local Law 97 is great in terms of its intent, but I think where we need to work on it is, pragmatically, how is this going to get implemented and carried out on the
ground, right?” Lee told Crain’s, adding that her eastern Queens district has the largest number of co-ops and condos in the city. “I think, practically speaking, it set a really high bar that really could impact people nancially in a negative way.”
Owners of some outer-borough co-ops and condos have vocally opposed the law, crowding recent town halls to gripe about thenancial challenges of investing in building retro ts to reduce their carbon output. Two Queens coops are part of an ongoing lawsuit against Local Law 97; the challenge was thrown out in November but is back in play on appeal.
Lee’s proposed legislation has earned the support of 24 other sponsors — one council member short of a majority. Such a majority would make it harder for City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who herself represents parts of Queens where co-ops and condos have raised nancial concerns about the law, to ignore the bill and increase the likelihood of it coming to the oor for a vote. Lee said she aims for the bill to be brought for a vote before the end of the year.
e in uential Real Estate Board of New York is mulling an endorsement for the bill.
“While Local Law 97 sets laudable goals, its aggressive penalties will be most acutely felt by residential buildings including many middle-income cooperatives and
condominiums," REBNY spokesman Christopher Santarelli said in a statement. "Solutions that will help building owners successfully decarbonize and achieve the goals of the law — including some components of this legislation — are overdue."
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, meanwhile, has been lukewarm on the measure. City Hall declined to comment, but the Department of Buildings told Crain’s it does not support Lee’s bill. Buildings Department spokesman David Maggiotto emphasized in a statement that “this administration
is committed to fully enforcing our nation-leading climate law.”
Building owners who skirt Local Law 97 could face nes of $268 per ton of emissions over the limit — a penalty that for some properties could stack up to six gures or more annually. But that levy would be signi cantly lightened for co-ops and condos if Lee’s bill becomes law.
Co-op and condo buildings where the average assessed value of a unit is $65,000 or less (determined by the city’s Department of Finance) would be exempt from nes between the years 2030 and 2035, according to the bill text. Fines for those buildings would be halved between 2046 and 2040,
and slashed by 25% from 2041 through 2045.
Lee’s bill would also require the Department of Buildings to consider adjusting emissions limits for co-ops and condos if they’ve taken certain steps to reduce their carbon footprints, such as converting from oil to gas or installing solar panels.
“We're just trying to think creatively about how to minimize some of the nes and the penalties that we know are coming down the pipeline,” said Lee, who said constituents persistently reaching out with concerns about a ording building retro ts motivated her to introduce the bill.
But some elected o cials and environmental advocates argue that the bill would defang Local Law 97 for a sizable chunk of the city’s buildings.
City Comptroller Brad Lander said in a statement that Lee’s proposed legislation would result in a “watered down” version of the law, while Public Advocate Jumanne Williams has encouraged elected leaders to “push to make sure that we don't weaken this law."
“Local Law 97 is building a cleaner future for New York,” said Eric Weltman, a senior organizer with Food & Water Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based NGO that advocates for climate-friendly policies. “ e corporate real estate industry’s bald-faced e ort to gut the law will only take our city backwards.”
By C. J. Hughes
Billionaire developer Michael Fuchs is looking to unload one of his Greenwich Village townhouses, as his rm, RFR Holding, endures a rough patch of defaults, foreclosures and lawsuits.
Fuchs, the lower-pro le half of a company whose other principal is Aby Rosen, has listed 144 Waverly Place, a 23-foot-wide, 6,300-squarefoot prewar property west of Sixth Avenue. Its asking price is $8.9 million, less than the $9.2 million Fuchs paid in 2019, so Fuchs appears willing to take a loss.
ough the person who signed the deed in 2019 is RFR lawyer Rich Froom, he appears to sometimes handle residential transactions on behalf of company ocials. Indeed, Froom’s name is on the deed for the Park Avenue condo purchased last year by RFR executive Alexander Koblischek, who oversees the rm’s investments in Germany.
Plus, the owner of 144 Waverly as per the city register, MF Townhouse LLC, uses Fuchs’ initials, the same initials used for other homes linked to Fuchs, like a two-bedroom condo at 302 W. 12th St. that he purchased in 2018 with ex-wife Alvina Collardeau. Fuchs appears to still own that unit, which he and Collardeau bought from the comedian Seth Meyers and his wife, attorney Alexi Meyers, for $4.4 million. It doesn’t appear as if Fuchs ever
lived at 144 Waverly, a ve- oor Greek Revival dwelling divided into four units, including an owner’s duplex, which seems to have functioned as an investment property. e units there have been marketed as rentals through the years, including the duplex, which was listed at around $14,000 a month in 2021, according to StreetEasy.
In fact, Fuchs owns another townhouse at nearby 59 Morton St., a single-family version near Hudson St. that he bought at the same time as the Waverly Place property and from the same seller. It cost $8.3 million, according to the register, and is not currently on the market.
To nance the April 2018 purchase of both Waverly Place and Morton Street, Fuchs borrowed $14 million from M&T Bank, the register shows.
RFR, which has multiple holdings in New York; Stamford, Conn.; and Seattle, and is an owner of the landmark high-rises the Chrysler Building and the Seagram Building, notched a major win this month with the sale of the mixeduse Upper East Side building 980 Madison Ave. for $560 million to a charitable group tied to billionaire and former Mayor Michel Bloomberg. RFR appears to have bought the building in 2004 for $125 million deal, records show.
In 2022 RFR also o oaded the West Village o ce building 95
By Amanda D’Ambrosio
Dr. Robert Grossman, NYU Langone’s CEO, and Kenneth Langone, chair of the board of trustees, are both set to retire next year, the health system said June 13.
“It is immensely gratifying to know that we have transformed NYU Langone Health into an institution that is simply nonpareil,” said Grossman, who announced the leadership changes in an email to employees on June 12. “But all good things must come to an end.” e executives will step down from their respective positions next August.
Grossman has led the institution since 2007, as NYU has become one of New York City’s highest-earning hospital systems. Last year, NYU Langone brought in more than $12 billion in revenue. It has expanded over the past few decades to include six inpa-
tient locations, the Perlmutter Cancer Center and 300 outpatient locations across the New York City region and Florida. Grossman also serves as the dean of the Grossman School of Medicine, and founded NYU’s Long Island medical school.
Langone, who became a billionaire after he co-founded the Home Depot, has served as the chair of the board of trustees since 1999 and has been one of the health system’s largest donors. Fiona Druckenmiller, a vintage jewelry dealer and philanthropist who has served on NYU’s board since 2006, will take over as chair. Although Langone plans to step down as the chair of the board, he will remain a member.
NYU Langone has begun a nationwide search for its next CEO to replace Grossman, said Steve Ritea, a spokesman for the health system.
Morton St. for $288 million after shelling out $206 million for it in 2017. Also, the rm also stands to rake in a hefty haul for 281 Park Avenue South, the home of the Swedish photography museum Fotogra ska, which is now being marketed for the reported amount of $140 million. RFR paid $50 million for the National Register property in 2014, records show.
But on other fronts, RFR, which Germany-born childhood friends Fuchs and Rosen founded in 1991, appears to be struggling in the face of mounting debts.
Fitch this month downgraded its
rating on a security linked to a $102 million mortgage at RFR’s 90 Fifth Ave. over missed property tax payments; the loan for the o ce building had previously been sent to a special servicer.
Likewise, a lender moved this month to foreclose on RFR’s 522 Fifth Ave. over the landlord’s failure to pay o a $224 million loan when it came due in March. e rm also defaulted earlier this year on an $80 million mortgage issued for a multifamily development site on ird Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
Ex-partner Jason Brown sued RFR earlier this year over the rm’s
allegedly failing to pay the entirety of Brown’s $25 million exit package. And on a personal level, Fuchs recently emerged bruised from a bitter court battle in England with ex-wife Collardeau over the details of their prenuptial agreement, with a judge ordering Fuchs to pay Collardeau, a former British journalist, $44 million.
A phone message for Sheldon Werdiger, who handles RFR’s marketing, was not returned by press time. And Christopher Riccio, the Douglas Elliman agent marketing the property, did not respond to an email for comment.
Anew City Council bill would require the city’s health plan cover the cost of fertility treatments regardless of an infertility diagnosis, a move designed to level the playing eld for gay male couples looking to start a family.
e move to clarify and ensure everyone has access to the bene t makes sense and is unlikely to result in a signi cant increase in costs: Of the $11 billion the city spends on health bene ts each year, only about $50 million goes toward fertility bene ts, which are utilized by about 3% of the total covered population.
LGBTQ+ couples often struggle to obtain insurance coverage for the costly procedures required to build a family, from egg donation to in vitro fertilization, surrogacy and adoption, as Judy Messina reports in a story on Page 1 this week. Only seven states, including New York, require insurance companies provide such coverage irrespective of a couple’s sex or sexual orientation. Local government employees are among those battling for equal access to fertility bene ts.
NYC’s health plan covers fertility bene-
ts, including in-vitro fertilization, which fertilizes eggs in a lab, and can cost $15,000 per cycle. But the bill’s sponsor, Councilwoman Lynn Schulman, says that gay male couples can’t access the bene ts because they don’t meet an outdated de nition of infertility.
e insurance plan covers up to three cycles of assisted reproductive treatments, which can include IVF. But under state law
mandating fertility bene ts, employees are required to prove that they have a diagnosis of infertility to get that coverage, meaning that they are unable to get pregnant after a year of unprotected sex. at de nition can include heterosexual couples, same-sex female couples and single women, but prevents gay male couples from qualifying for coverage, Schulman says.
e city has refuted claims that its current insurance practices are discriminatory, noting that an infertility diagnosis is not the only pathway to obtain coverage for IVF.
e Council is not the only party pushing back on the city’s coverage practices. e Adams administration also faces a class action lawsuit led by Corey Briskin, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney, and his husband Nicholas Maggipinto, who said they were not eligible for IVF coverage because neither was diagnosed with infertility.
e city would be wise to follow the lead of many private employers in the region, and large companies in particular, that have stepped up, providing the same family-building bene ts to gay couples that they o er to heterosexual employees. ey see such bene ts and programs as a key to recruitment, productivity and job satisfaction. It would also give the city another recruitment tool as it seeks to ll a glut of open positions.
In my former life, as chair of the New York City Council Contracts Committee, I opined in these pages about the value of cloud computing and the need to make it as easy as possible for city agencies to contract for cloud services and speed the transition of their operations from costly on-premise data centers to the cloud. e rationale was then, as it remains today, that cloud computing could make government more e cient and e ective in the delivery of services to our constituents. Now, in my role as chair of the Finance Committee, I believe it’s time to seriously consider the ability of the cloud to generate signi cant budgetary savings as well.
In terms of e ciency, the pandemic o ered numerous case studies for how cloud computing could bolster government. As the world went into pandemic lockdown, governments couldn’t shut down and pause critical services to their citizens and so they had to nd a way to keep working. To provide e cient and scalable services and allow numerous employees to successfully do their jobs remotely, government agencies needed to make a swift digital transformation into the cloud.
For a concrete example right here in the
tri-state area, consider that while many court systems nationwide had to stop proceedings, due to a smart investment in technology modernization and rapid development of a new electronic documents system, the New Jersey Court system was able to stay fully operational without interruption — even with 99 percent of its sta working from home. at is what I call e ciency. We just shouldn’t need a global pandemic to compel us to achieve such technological gains.
Along with advantages such as state-of-the-art security and the ability to incorporate A.I. and machine learning technologies in to an agency’s use of data, cloud computing also o ers signi cant savings for local and municipal governments. Not only does it allow New York City agencies to pay for only as much cloud capacity as they need on a day-to-day basis, but we can also save substantial capital costs as the cloud does not require any physical hardware investments or data centers (or regular upgrades/updates to those legacy technologies). Plus, with so many companies now competing in the cloud space and so much innovation happening — from the
big companies, such as Microsoft, Google and AWS to cloud startups based right here in the ve boroughs — there has never been a better time to accelerate New York City’s commitment to cloud computing. at’s why I’m so proud to have recently introduced legislation (Intro 540) that will require City government to undertake an overall evaluation of our City’s cloud usage and capabilities and consider potential “Cloud First” policies that will expedite our agencies’ move to the cloud and save us money! Let’s face facts: line items like the loss of federal funds, increased labor costs and an unprecedented migrant crisis have added signi cant budgetary pressures and so we have a responsibility to look to areas of potential savings both big and small, and cloud computing has proven it can generate signi cant saving that can be used on our other priorities. Competing cities and states across the country have already implemented similar “Cloud First” policies (as did the federal government during the Obama Administration) as a common-sense tool
for ensuring they are operating in the most cost-e ective manner possible. It’s time to break the inertia and technology gap that too often limits innovation in municipal government and allow New York City to harness the power of the cloud that is already signi cantly benetting many state and local governments. e fact is that with budget concerns facing us both this year and into the foreseeable future, we simply can’t a ord to continue to try to do new things in the old ways. And so with apologies to Jerry McGuire fans, it’s time to let the cloud show us the money!
New York State is blessed with some of the nest hospitals in the world. But for decades we have struggled with the question of how many hospital beds are too many, and how to make sure that everyone has su cient access to the beds we do have.
Recently, o cials have discussed plans to shutter — or at least substantially downsize — SUNY Downstate Medical Center, a vital safety net provider in Brooklyn. After a groundswell of support, language was included the 202425 state budget that, with the help of $100 million in operating funding and $300 million in capital funding, keeps the hospital open for another year, and establishes a nine-member community advisory board of state o cials and community representatives charged with recommending changes to the facility. is increased focus on hospital capacity and resulting activism all point to the need for better access protections and greater information about changes to the healthcare delivery system. New York’s “certi cate of need” (“CON”) program is the rst line of defense in ensuring public input into such changes. However, not everyone feels the same way about CON. While there are bills
pending in the Legislature to expand public notice requirements under CON, or even impose a total moratorium on hospital closures, there are just as many e orts to reduce CON requirements.
In 1964, New York was the rst state to try to allocate healthcare services, including hospital beds, in a coordinated way, when we established a comprehensive CON program aimed at ensuring no new hospital was built unless it could be proven that there was a public need for it. at worked well enough for many years, but demographic shifts resulted in too many hospital beds being located where they were not needed, and not enough beds where they were needed. is led to an “arm’s race” among providers to expand service options and make sure empty beds are lled, resulting in increasing and often unnecessary cost.
All of this culminated in 2005 in the establishment of a state commission (the “Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century,” colloquially known as the “Berger Commission,” named after its chair, Stephen Berger), that was charged with right-sizing the number of beds statewide, and helped drive $1.5 billion in funding to help support necessary changes. e resulting closures
and mergers were by no means pain-free, but generally proceeded in an orderly manner that protected patient access to care.
Since then, we have seen what can happen when right-sizing does not happen in an orderly way. e venerable St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan — which had served the Greenwich Village area for 160 years, treating the survivors of the Titanic in 1912 and victims of the World Trade Center attacks in 2001, and in between being one of the rst providers to address the AIDS crisis in the 1980s — closed in 2010, leaving state o cials scrambling to ensure replacement care for stranded patients. Other hospitals followed suit in subsequent years, with issues concerning access to care being highlighted in stark relief during the pandemic, when hospitals serving vulnerable populations were disproportionately impacted.
All of this, and what occurred during the COVID pandemic in particular, has resulted in expanded public attention to the issue of
access to hospital services. In 2021, the state enacted a requirement that every CON application include a “health equity impact assessment” identifying the impact the project will have on access. is gave patients the information they needed to oppose the rst project to le such an assessment — a proposed closure of a birthing center in Troy, which has recently been suspended, with the help of a state grant to keep the center in operation for another ve years. As is so often the case, the right choice is probably somewhere in the middle. In many cases, more exibility in the CON system might be appropriate. But it is di cult to argue that more information about proposed projects should not be made available to the public — and the public should have a fair chance to respond. e right to notice and the opportunity to be heard is fundamental to our notions of due process, and nowhere is that concern greater than when it comes to health care.
Recent polling shows most voters believe lowering out-of-pocket costs is the top health care priority for the country. For low-income and uninsured patients, the impact of rising out-ofpocket costs as a barrier to quality care is particularly acute. Policymakers are focused on a potential solution: the 340B Drug Pricing Program, a federally mandated system requiring drug manufacturers to provide steep discounts on medications. is may sound like a money-saver for states, but the opposite is true. Legislators in at least 20 states are seeking to remove oversight of for-pro t pharmacies in 340B, empowering pharmacies and pharmacy bene t managers to further drive participation; ironically, this will likely drive up state Medicaid costs.
Medicare, or a commercial health plan, the middlemen and the covered entities share in the pro ts generated by selling the patients products procured at a deep discount. e program is estimated to have generated at least $100 billion in retail drug sales last year, and roughly $50 billion in pro ts were shared by the covered entities and their pharmacy middlemen — mostly major chains like CVS and Walgreens.
Neal Masia
is an
adjunct professor of business and economics at Columbia University, CEO of EntityRisk Inc. and a former chief economist of P zer.
e 340B Drug Pricing Program requires manufacturers to provide discounts on drugs sold to “covered entities” (a mixture of hospitals and clinics that receive federal funding) which should help provide a ordable medicines to low-income and uninsured patients. ese covered entities often contract with for-pro t pharmacies (over 200,000 such contracts exist today), using the pharmacies as middlemen to nd well-insured patients who have received care from the covered entity and require prescriptions to be lled. When the prescriptions are reimbursed by Medicaid,
Our research suggests that the 340B program doesn’t just cost the drug manufacturers big discounts — it also costs states real money by increasing overall Medicaid spending. Medicaid is often the largest line item in a state’s budget, and health bene ts for state employees and retirees also require signi cant taxpayer resources. First, many states allow clinics and hospitals to earn 340B pro ts on Medicaid managed care patients, in e ect giving the 340B entities pro ts that would otherwise go to taxpayers in the form of Medicaid discounts. A large portion of those pro ts wind up going to major for-pro t pharmacy chains like CVS and Walgreens. Take New York, for example. According to a 2020 presentation, the 340B margin available under Managed Care cost the New York Medicaid program over $200 million a year — not accounting for lost rebates. e same presentation showed that the loss of rebates totaled over $800 million over a four-year period and continued to in-
crease year over year. A few states, including California and New York, have taken action to recapture the savings for themselves and saved hundreds of millions of dollars.
e 340B program impacts not only drug costs, but many of the underlying drivers of healthcare costs. Researchers have shown that use of the 340B program leads to more expensive care choices, like moving cancer care into hospital outpatient settings or encouraging the use of the treatments with the biggest 340B discounts. My own recent work shows that holding other drivers of costs constant, overall Medicaid costs per enrollee go up signi cantly as 340B activity increases, costing states and the federal government billions of dollars per year in increased Medicaid costs.
At least 20 states have introduced or passed legislative proposals that seek to expand the program and protect the opera-
tions of pharmacies in 340B. Mandating drug discounts for entities treating lowincome patients has great appeal. But, 340B has become a very big business, with billions or perhaps tens of billions of pro ts per year shared between large, pro table health systems and their for-pro t pharmacy partners, with no requirement that any share of those pro ts be shared with lowincome patients.
While 340B pro ts may help smaller clinics and hospitals cope with the rising tide of near-term Medicaid losses and shortfalls, 340B is contributing signi cantly to the pressure those clinics and hospitals are facing. While the 340B program is not a line item in any state’s annual budget, it is a major indirect driver of increased healthcare spending. Lawmakers seeking to provide e cient care to low-income patients may wish to reconsider their enthusiasm for 340B.
| By Valerie Block
Accessible mass transit is one of New York City’s greatest assets. But the city’s aging infrastructure will need a full-scale makeover to keep it that way for future generations as the city’s population balloons from about 8 million today to a projected 9.5 million by 2050.
e MTA and a host of other stakeholders have myriad plans that could expand service, cut commute times and improve accessibility for millions of people going forward. In the coming years New Yorkers could be riding Metro North trains from the Bronx to Penn Station, getting out of town via a shiny new Port Authority Bus Terminal or booking an electric air taxi that can take them to the airport in seven minutes for the cost of an Uber ride.
Congestion pricing, which was expected to help pay for some big MTA projects, is on inde nite hold following Gov. Kathy Hochul’s surprise push of the pause button in early June. If resurrected, as many predict, congestion pricing will usher in a friendlier streetscape with more room for pedestrian plazas, bike lanes and EV charging stations.
“Public transit is one of the few things that makes New York City a ordable,” said MTA chief Janno Lieber, who helms an agency that manages a sprawling system estimated to be worth $1.5 trillion but that requires a mind-numbingly expensive investment in modernization. “Public transit is like air and water. We need it to survive.”
Still, change comes incrementally to the city, with most new ideas fraught with funding shortfalls and legal challenges. It took nearly 20 years for congestion pricing to go from a proposal to preparation for launch June 30 before the governor’s about-face. It would have brought $1 billion annually to the MTA to help fund long-term projects like a Second Avenue Subway expansion to East Harlem — which has been in the works since the 1920s.
One of the greatest needs right now, transit experts say, is maintaining and improving the current transit system. For more than a decade, the MTA has been replacing outdated subway signals with communica-
tions-based train control that uses wireless connectivity to improve on-time service and boost frequency. It’s already installed and providing more frequent service on the L and 7 lines and is slowly making its way through the system.
Overall, about 85% of the MTA’s capital budget goes towards maintaining and updating its many assets.
“It’s not sexy,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, “but it’s the literal nuts and bolts of the system that hold it together. It takes care of the things
“People tend to think in the immediacy of things, and lose sight of the fact that you’re building infrastructure that’s going to serve the public and the community for potentially hundreds of years.”
Kevin Collins, New York of ce leader at infrastructure design rm HNTB
we can’t see.”
Bigger projects in the works will bring service to long-underserved communities in Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens.
e Second Avenue Subway Phase Two, a $7.7 billion project, will extend the Q line to 125th Street in East Harlem. ough still in its infancy, a top MTA construction o cial said that work on the project is now on hold because funding for the subway extension is up in the air without revenue expected from congestion pricing.
If the project advances, the extension could revitalize the area north of 96th Street.
“When they tore down the el 100 years ago, they expected to put it back as a subway pretty quickly, and it didn’t happen until recently,” said Adam Levine, executive director of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council. He said the Harlem extension will be “much appreciated by anybody who lives near it.”
e Interborough Express, a $5.5 billion light rail system that will run between Brooklyn and Queens, will bring service to another so-called transit desert and allow riders with limited subway access to get from Brooklyn to Queens without having to travel through Manhattan. Hochul is a proponent, but funding has yet to be nailed down beyond the $45 million for engineering the governor has earmarked.
Other dream projects could improve commutes for millions traveling in and out of the city.
Penn Station Access, a multibilliondollar plan that scored $1.64 billion from the federal government, could bring Metro North trains into Penn Station for the rst time. Four new Metro North stations are already under construction in the Bronx, but again, delays are likely due to congestion pricing uncertainty.
A $10 billion replacement and expansion of the 73-year-old Port Authority Bus Terminal, the busiest bus station in the world by volume of tra c, will provide direct access to the Lincoln Tunnel, taking buses o the streets, reducing congestion, improving air quality and bringing commuters a glitzy new structure by 2032, if all goes according to plan.
e Gateway tunnel, the o -again onagain $16 billion Port Authority project, will add capacity under the Hudson River, relieving train congestion heading into Penn Station from New Jersey and improving resiliency, with a due date around 2038. While the big projects inch along, alternatives to cars, buses and trains are growing. Ferry service is expanding, and Citibike continues to break ridership records. Green initiatives are spurring change. e Taxi & Limousine Commission is adding to its electric vehicle eet as part of the city’s 2030 electri cation mandate. To encourage that
In various stages of development, plans in the works could upgrade travel around the boroughs and beyond
From Page 11
transition, charging stations are slowly cropping up around the tri-state area.
EV ride-share company Revel recently announced plans to build a fast-charging station with 48 stalls near LaGuardia Airport. e facility will mainly serve EV taxi and ride-share drivers and could be operational by 2025. e facility will add to similar stations that Revel has opened or has plans to open around the boroughs.
Separately, there are 30 EV stations at JFK Airport, 17 at LaGuardia and 155 at Newark Liberty Airport. Overall, there are about 2,100 charging ports in the metro area, according to City Hall.
As Tesla, Google and other autonomous vehicle manufacturers struggle to bring the new driverless car technology to public roads, the Port Authority has been testing autonomous vehicles that could eventually
“New York transit expansions are good investments. On a per-passenger basis, New York is the cheapest.”
Janno Lieber, chief of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority
be used to shuttle passengers to terminals from far- ung airport parking areas or the AirTrain. Initial tests have been in parking lots. is summer at JFK and Newark, the Port Authority will test how the driverless trolleys can perform in mixed tra c on airport roads.
“We’re thinking about how AVs can serve rst-mile, last-mile connectivity,” said Seth Wainer, the Port Authority’s program director for innovation. “We look at our transit network and how we can ll in the gaps in the current network to get to these places.” With technological developments moving fast and getting cheaper, he said AVs could be shuttling passengers around area airports within ve years.
Getting to the airport via public transit is still a hassle, despite the addition of the AirTrain to JFK two decades ago. Electric air tax-
Valerie Block
New York-area airports are in the midst of major transformations that are finally bringing the dark and dumpy terminals — long considered some of the worst in the world — into the modern age.
“Beginning at LaGuardia and then at Newark Liberty's Terminal A and now at JFK International, the Port Authority’s intense focus has been to replace some of the nation’s worst airports with new terminals that will be ranked among the world’s best,” said Port Authority Executive Director Rick Cotton. e agency is on the right track.
and nine more gates opening in 2030. Terminal 6, at 1.2 million square feet, will also open in two phases, with the first five gates to be completed in 2026 and the final five gates opening in 2028.
Streamlined roadways, light and airy architecture, upgraded retail and dining options and updated TSA security will enhance travelers’ experience.
New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport has not been left out. After the award-winning $2.7 billion revamp of Terminal A, the Port Authority is developing plans to update Newark’s Terminal B. Meanwhile, a $2.2 billion replacement of its AirTrain is expected to be completed in 2030.
is could really cut down on commute time.
Manufacturer Joby Aviation tested its electric vertical take-o and landing, or eVTOL, aircraft at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport late last year. e ride to JFK would take seven minutes and could be available as soon as 2025, provided the FAA signs o .
Bene ts of going big
As congestion pricing stutters in New York, evidence from around the world shows that it works. In London, tra c congestion is down about 30% since its 2003 launch. ere have been several tweaks to the system, and no doubt, there will be adjustments made here if the program takes hold.
e hope is that the city will see huge bene ts in cleaner air, less tra c, more room for cyclists and pedestrians, and more money to fund and rebuild public transit for years to come.
e big projects, though, should not come at the expense of critical maintenance needed to support the current sprawling system.
“ e highest priority will be to invest in the current system to keep it in a state of good repair,” said Andrew Rein, president, Citizens Budget Commission. “If we don’t, we’ll have a deteriorating system that will cost more in the long run.”
Most transit bu s believe the city needs to juggle the big projects and the small. e costs of expansion are huge, but the bene ts can last for generations.
“People tend to think in the immediacy of things, and lose sight of the fact that you’re building infrastructure that’s going to serve the public and the community for potentially hundreds of years,” said Kevin Collins, New York o ce leader at infrastructure design rm HNTB, which is involved in multiple projects with the MTA and Port Authority.
New York historically has been capable of doing both. e MTA’s Lieber sco ed at the notion that it’s too expensive to go big in this city. “New York transit expansions are good investments,” he said. While construction costs more in other locales, no other transit system in the U.S. has the volume of New York. “On a per-passenger basis, New York is the cheapest,” he said.
“Our new terminals at LaGuardia and Newark . . . today stand as the only terminals in North America to earn ve-star ratings from the preeminent airport rating service, Skytrax.”
Rick Cotton, Port Authority executive director
LaGuardia was the first to undergo a dramatic renovation. After years of construction that caused traffic jams and headaches for travelers, the $8 billion revamp debuted to stellar reviews in 2022. Light-filled and stocked with impressive public art and modern amenities, airport ranking site Skytrax named LaGuardia Terminal B the best new airport terminal in the world in 2023.
State-of-the-art technology and greater space for security screening have helped reduce lines and delays. Even the airplanes have more room to move, reducing delays on the tarmac.
Now JFK is in the midst of its own $19 billion revitalization, with two new terminals as the cornerstone of the renovation. The new, 2.4 million-square-foot Terminal One will open in two phases, with a new arrivals and departures hall and the first 14 gates opening in 2026,
“Our new terminals at LaGuardia and Newark reflect our agency’s high standards for best-in-class customer experience, from curb to gate, and today stand as the only terminals in North America to earn fivestar ratings from the preeminent airport rating service, Skytrax,” Cotton said. “Our aim at JFK, when complete, is not just to meet these standards but to exceed them.”
The developments have been lauded by travel experts and transit watchdogs alike. But there’s one missing link: Some critics would like to see better public transportation options to get to the airports.
There’s little movement in that direction at the moment. Plans to build an AirTrain to LaGuardia were scrapped last year after costs skyrocketed. The AirTrain to JFK includes cumbersome transfers to and from subways or rail systems.
“The Port Authority has done some critically important upgrades to the airports,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog agency. “But,” he added, “it’s still a drag to get there.”
Innovation does not come easily to large organizations, particularly in the public sector. Ingrained routines, regulatory requirements that are dicult to change, detailed process requirements rooted in xing long-ago missteps are partial explanations beyond the very human aversion to change and the unfamiliar. e fundamental role of new technology and the speed of technological change, however, demand that we build innovation into the DNA of our organization.
In the transportation industry, it takes extensive testing of new approaches and technology, as well as a proactive commitment to identifying best practices and to promoting new technology to achieve better outcomes and get things done in the real world more quickly.
With those goals in mind, the Port Authority borrowed a practice from many private companies and a few forward-looking public ones: a purpose-built employee innovation hub to shake things up and explore new ways of doing things. At the Port
At the Port Authority, the innovation hub was started in 2022 with a lowly kickoff budget of about $300,000.
Authority, the innovation hub was started in 2022 with a lowly kicko budget of about $300,000.
e iHub, as it is known within the agency, provides a weekly opportunity for employees to peer-review tech pitches and then pitch the ideas to the leaders of the agency. Its test projects use simple benchmarks to measure success, and iHub members guide each other on pitch-
How to
a
New York City, 2050. Congestion pricing has been in e ect for over a quarter-century, generating more than $30 billion to modernize transit. Car tra c has dropped signicantly, especially in Manhattan below 60th Street, and all New Yorkers are bene tting from cleaner air and quieter streets. In tandem with autonomous vehicle technology that can detect pedestrians and cyclists and prevent crashes, Vision Zero — the goal of zero tra c deaths or serious injuries — is nally within reach.
All the new revenue has transformed how we get around the city. With more room on the roads, buses move far more swiftly, often in dedicated lanes. ey’re joined on major arteries like First and Second avenues by light-rail-like vehicles carrying tens of thousands of passengers hourly. Iconic 42nd Street is now limited to pedestrians and transit; trackless trams o er 15-minute rides river-to-river. Below-ground, the on-time performance of the subway is at a record 99%. Meanwhile, a better-integrated regional rail network makes travel across the tri-state a breeze.
Aing, execution and reporting results. Employees who nish a pilot, regardless of its success, receive awards of up to $2,000. So far, the iHub has approved more than 30 pilot projects and executed 15.
What is the iHub considering? Self-driving electric shuttles at its airports that recharge through inductive charging capabilities embedded in roadways; a driverless electric streetsweeper; an electric “taxi-bot” that can tow an airplane from its gate to a runway without wastefully ring up the airplane’s jet engines; planning the infrastructure for the coming era of electric air taxis that can y over congested highways; airborne and underwater drones for inspections of bridges and berths; smart sensors embedded into bridge and tunnel roadways and ramps to detect crashes or near-misses at choke and merge points; autonomous technology in commuter buses to increase throughput safely in express bus lanes; AI-assisted identi cation of suspicious bags or objects at Port Authority facilities; and technological xes to reduce the current ridiculous chaos at pick-up points for rideshare vehicles. With each project comes an opportunity — not only to institute change for the better but also to pursue new ways of thinking about how the organization does its job. Pursuing innovation and keeping up with technological changes often fall on the back burner when day-to-day operations consume the bulk of existing resources. To make sure that doesn’t happen, we build it into our everyday work now. Make no mistake: Innovation is and will always be hard work, but that’s what it will take to get to a transportation future that this region deserves.
re we dreaming? Yes, but it’s all possible with good leadership, smart planning and su cient funding. Let’s start with leadership: we need future governors and mayors to commit to transit investment programs like congestion pricing in the central business district and restoration of the payroll tax in the suburbs. ey need to appoint transportation leaders who have proven they can run big agencies and have foresight and courage.
One of the biggest innovations our leaders could embrace is simply working better together. We have an extensive network of existing rail lines, but they are broken into efdoms: LIRR, Metro North, the subway, NJ Transit, Amtrak, PATH and the AirTrains. e most crucial project the operators need to coordinate is through-running trains at Penn Station; with some major infrastructure changes, you could one day be able to ride from Newark to New Rochelle or Montclair to Massapequa without having to switch. Fare integration, so you can seamlessly pay for transit no matter the operator, should also be a goal.
Now that Gov. Kathy Hochul has caved to special interest groups on congestion pricing, it may be the moment to rethink the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan. Technology, through global navigation systems, is getting so good that we can charge drivers for how much of a roadway they use instead of a at charge on entry. I envision dynamic pricing based on miles traveled, time spent and which streets a driver uses (Fifth Avenue at Christmastime, for example, should be more expensive than 11th Avenue in February).
With dedicated leadership and more funding, our transit agencies would be better positioned to leverage advances in technology — especially in autonomous vehicles. For the most part, our operators in the U.S. have been stuck in the mid-20th century, with buses or trains as the only options. Other countries, including China, Australia, Israel and Mexico, are exploring “trackless trams,” rail-type rubber-tired vehicles that, guided by sensors, can run on virtual or painted tracks, o ering the smoothness and capacity of rail but with more exibility. ey could also be built at a fraction of the cost (full disclosure: Schwartz has a patent pending on a comparable type of vehicle).
Smaller AV on-demand shuttles, meanwhile, could ll gaps in our bus network, a ordably connecting residents of current transit deserts to subway and select bus service routes. ey could also o er door-to-door rides for older people and others who experience challenges using public transit. Finally, while cuttingedge technologies are exciting, we also need to return to the basics: designs and policies that promote safe, sustainable mobility. We’re already a national leader in walking, and thanks to years of e ort, 2023 was the safest year for pedestrians in more than a century — but that still equated to 101 deaths. e o cial goal is, and should be, zero. We don’t need to look far for inspiration. Just across the Hudson, Hoboken hasn’t had a tra c death in seven years. We’ve similarly made progress on cycling, which is at an all-time high, but we’ve also seen a surge in cycling fatalities. Further, despite increasing ridership, fewer than 2% of New Yorkers commute by bike. A major constraint is crossing the Hudson and East Rivers. ere’s no way to bike directly to the central business district from New Jersey, and the East River bridges’ bike and pedestrian paths are at or near capacity. It’s time to build the rst bridges to Manhattan’s business district since 1909, but only for pedestrians and bikes. As we ponder the future, we should rethink the most signi cant transportation technology the world has ever seen — shoes! With apologies to Nancy Sinatra, these streets were made for walking (and biking and transit). Using new technology and good policy, we believe we can seize this moment to build a transportation system that works better for all New Yorkers.
New York’s hustle and bustle is part of its charm; but over the past few years, it’s verged from charming to overwhelming, as the ways we get around — and all the stu we allocate our limited street space to — have proliferated on streets built for horse and buggy.
First, there’s all the ways we get around.
Personal vehicles. Ride share. Bike share. Scooters. Mopeds. Automated everything, from cars to buses, is around the corner.
health and economic goals?
First, we need to look towards our blue highways.
en, there’s how our stu gets to us; 90% of everything we buy, from food to clothing and medicine comes in by truck. Postpandemic, many of us have gotten used to immediate, app-enabled delivery. So we add e-bike food delivery, Amazon trucks and e-cargo bikes. en there are the non-transportation needs: parks and plazas. Outdoor dining. Containerization. Every inch of the public realm is constantly pulled between diverse demands.
We would be foolish to think this is the end of history. More modes are coming, from delivery robots to drones. there will be new demands on streets as they do, from battery charging to bike storage. e future of transportation is here. e question is, how do we make it work for all of us? How do we allocate the space we have for highest and best use, in a way that supports our environmental,
It’s easy to forget, standing almost anywhere in New York, that we are not merely a city surrounded by water: Water is the spinal column around which New York’s musculature is built, the throughthread that binds our volume of humanity and steel.
Not that long ago, New York’s economy was dependent on hundreds of piers which ringed the city. Most of those piers were lost to an industrial era which brought the steam engine and then airplanes.
Over the past few decades, we’ve done a great job unlocking a formerly industrial waterfront for rest, connection and joy — the NYC and Staten Island ferries carry almost 700,000 passengers per week in peak seasons. But it’s time to go full-circle, getting our packages o trucks and back onto the water.
Which is why, with the support of the federal government, the city is upgrading six piers in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx, so barges can unload freight to cargo bikes waiting at the dock and bypass 335,000 truck miles per year.
We took control of 120 acres of Red Hook waterfront, investing over $95 million — and are looking to federal funding to modernize piers 8 and 9.
Once packages are in the city, then what?
We must rationalize last-mile delivery.
Since the start of the administration, cargo bikes have delivered 10 million packages — the largest program in the nation. Two cargo bikes can replace one box truck, reducing carbon emissions by 14 tons per year. We must accommodate them.
We’re widening bike lanes in the busiest sections of the city to account for the fact that they’re integral commercial infrastructure — both a space for leisure and work, the o ce of 70,000 delivery workers.
“Microhubs” — single locations to unload packages from trucks onto loweremissions vehicles — will help put a dent in double-parking, as many other global cities can attest. We expect that one microhubs can prevent almost 30 idling trucks within a half mile per week.
But that’s just the beginning. We must t new modes into an already-crowded landscape.
We want our city to be welcoming to the conveniences of modern life. But the way it works today — the app-enabled delivery of everything, incentivizing speed and recklessness — doesn’t work for anyone. With new modes of getting around and delivering goods being tested nationwide — from robots to driverless cars — government must be ahead of the curve.
Which is why the Adams administration is working with the New York City Council to expand the city’s jurisdiction to regulate
the industry — to create a safety rating based on eet conduct, to positively incentivize workers to obey the rules of the road and to write requirements for safe equipment.
Of course, cars are reality. ey are the tool modern American life was built on. Our economy relies on mobility; our life depends on the quality of air we breathe. We can have both. We’re going electric. We already have the country’s largest municipal electric eet, and over 10,000 e-chargers citywide. e city’s eet of forhire vehicles will be zero emission by 2030, the same year every New Yorker will be no more than 2.5 miles from a fast charger. With help from the federal government, we’re electrifying our school bus eet and trucks at freight hubs. e good news is the future of transportation in New York is exciting, nimble and electric — and will help ensure this city remains a dynamic global hub and a great place to live and work.
The best time to build for tomorrow is today. We’re in a moment of historic transit and mobility investment which will improve mobility for future generations, but we need innovative policies such as congestion pricing to maintain funding and manage our roads. Now is the time to double down on transit investments for future generations — not to pull back from innovative policies.
e 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocated $1.2 trillion to national infrastructure, with at least $1.6 billion earmarked for New York City. With this historic funding comes an unprecedented opportunity to build capacity and shape the future of New York City transportation around meeting the twin challenges of climate change and social equity.
We’ve made enormous strides in expanding and modernizing our transit systems by extending the # 7 subway to Manhattan’s West Side in 2015; completing the rst phase of the Second Avenue Subway in 2017; opening the magni cent Moynihan Train Hall in 2021; and connecting the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal in 2023. Newark Liberty and LaGuardia airports boast brilliant new terminals, and JFK is being transformed. But for all these accomplishments, there is still much more to do. To keep up with this momentum, we need to go a step further. Investments in pending transit programs cannot only add capacity, but
must also expand e ciency, reliability and sustainability. We need to re-use historic infrastructure and be more innovative in our use of technology and delivery systems.
Covid-19 had an undeniable impact on the way that we live and work. While more employees across the nation work fully or partially remotely, New York City’s interdependence with the tri-state region is stronger than ever: Over 1 million commuters ow in and out of New York City from the tri-state region daily, lling one in ve jobs in the city. A 2023 RPA report forecasted that by 2050, travel demand across the Hudson River alone will outpace pre-pandemic commuter trips by 15% to 32%.
We reached the physical limits of our streets and roads to handle more vehicles over 50 years ago. So with 11 million commuters owing through the region’s transit network, more rail capacity is essential to economic vitality and environmental protection. And we must also look at enhancing the passenger experience. How can we ensure transit projects not only take commuters from point A to point B, but work with unparalleled reliability, comfort and innovation, adding a sense of pride to the journey? Riding transit should be an uplifting experience, rather than a chore.
Two major projects, the Port Authority Bus Terminal overhaul and the Gateway Program will begin to ful ll these needs.
— will be redeveloped for the modern traveler. e new design incorporates green infrastructure and prioritizes the pedestrian experience by reconnecting part of the street grid.
e Gateway Program, a comprehensive rail investment, will improve reliability and resiliency while creating new capacity for the section of the Northeast Corridor connecting New York and New Jersey — the most heavily used passenger rail line in the country. Gateway has been touted as the nation’s most urgent infrastructure project and continues to meet important milestones as it heads towards completion. Gateway underscores the scale of investment that is needed to keep ows of goods and people robust and our region economically healthy.
While these major investments in bus and commuter rail move along, a comprehensive approach is needed to sustain our regional transportation system in a postpandemic world where the supply chain demand and commuting patterns have shifted.
To support this change, New York and New Jersey have secured important funding to help modernize freight infrastructure and revisit the growth potential of moving goods by water. e Interborough Express will introduce light rail as a new mode of travel in New York City and connect Queens and Brooklyn without requiring travelers to go through Manhattan.
By repurposing an existing rail line, the IBX is a great example of future transit investment that will harmonize freight
and passenger movements, freeing up bus systems and drivers, reducing congestion and pollution. It just goes to prove that robust transportation investment is good climate policy.
Cities around the world are piloting programs to mitigate impacts from ecommerce at the curb, drafting “vehicle miles traveled” tolling legislation, and developing other ways to replace the gas tax, which is a declining revenue source as drivers shift to electric vehicles.
With congestion pricing, New York City was on the precipice of joining global cities making these climate strides — until Gov. Kathy Hochul “inde nitely postponed” its imminent implementation.
Although the program has been paused and its future is uncertain, congestion pricing is the right policy to fund our capital investments and manage road congestion, and we need our leaders to bring it back.
e time to build for tomorrow is now.
June is Pride Month, and Crain’s is celebrating by spotlighting trailblazers in sectors ranging from nance and health to sustainability and law. The individuals on the Notable LGBTQ+ Leaders list were selected not only because they excel in their respective elds, but also for their commitment to creating inclusive and equitable workplaces.
Read on as we honor the resilience of LGBTQ+ leaders who are inspiring future generations.
METHODOLOGY: Featured honorees were nominated by their peers, companies and acquaintances. Crain’s New York Business editors selected nominated honorees based on their accomplishments, track record of success and contributions to their industry and community, as outlined in the eligibility section of the nomination form.
Temidayo Aganga-Williams
Partner, Selendy Gay
Scope of work: Temidayo AgangaWilliams is a partner at the law rm Selendy Gay, where he represents Fortune 500 companies facing government enforcement actions, internal investigations, congressional oversight and civil litigation. He contributes to NBC and CNN, discussing legal updates in matters including investigations into former President Trump and notable cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Biggest professional win: He served as senior counsel to the House Select Committee, performing investigations into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. In this capacity, he conducted depositions and interviewed witnesses including advisors to former President Donald Trump.
Other contributions: He appeared in a 2024 PBS/Frontline documentary “Democracy on Trial,” discussing evidence gathered by the Jan. 6th committee and its historical impact.
Global head of LGBTQ+ affairs, JPMorgan Chase
Scope of work: At the private bank JPMorgan Chase, Brad Baumoel is global head of LGBTQ+ affairs. Baumoel, who has been a member of the Pride Business Resource Group for the past 26 years, promotes equity and inclusion, champions robust policies and supports employees, clients and business growth.
Biggest professional win: Baumoel was asked to form the Of ce of LGBTQ+ Affairs and has since spearheaded impactful programming. Since its inception, JPMorgan Chase has seen 50% and 35% increases in selfidentifying LGBTQ+ employees in 2022 and 2023, respectively. In addition, annual employee surveys regarding belonging and acceptance have seen satisfactory results.
Other contributions: Baumoel launched a transgender recruiting, development and support program with the nonpro t PeriFerry.
Culinary director, Rethink Food
Scope of work: Ken Baker is the culinary director at Rethink Food, a nonpro t dedicated to creating sustainable and fair food. Leading a team of 20 with a budget of $3 million, he orchestrates the production of nearly 20,000 meals weekly for food-insecure individuals and develops strategies to foster engagement and community bonds.
Biggest professional win: In 2023, Baker was selected to cook at New York City Pride’s of cial brunch. Representing Rethink Food, he showcased culinary creativity and highlighted the potential of surplus food to create delicious meals.
Other contributions: Baker actively supports organizations in the New York metro area, including East Village Neighbors Who Care, an organization that provides free meals to insecure New Yorkers.
Partner, Ropes & Gray
Scope of work: Eric Behl-Remijan is a partner in the law rm Ropes & Gray’s tax department. He concentrates on corporate, international and partnership tax alongside mergers and acquisitions and restructurings. Managing cross-border deals for public companies and private equity, Behl-Remijan advises corporations in health care, media and nance, focusing on taxef cient investments.
Biggest professional win: Behl-Remijan advises the global LGBTQ+ organization Out Leadership and was the catalyst in its Return on Equality Summit. With more than 200 attendees, the event explored inclusive governance and environmental, social, and governance practices.
Other contributions: BehlRemijan led a pro bono clinic with Legal Services New York in 2023 to assist transgender low-income clients in securing name and gender marker changes.
Managing director, head of business development of capital and advisory solutions, head of LGBTQ+ initiatives for commercial banking, JPMorgan Chase Scope of work: David Barbee is managing director, head of business development of capital and advisory solutions and head of LGBTQ+ initiatives for commercial banking at JPMorgan Chase. He works with businesses on strategic objectives including succession planning, growth management, capital ef ciency and transaction execution.
Biggest professional win: Barbee works with community organizations to foster inclusivity and has built a team that offers unique advisory capabilities. His platform serves private equity clients by offering tailored access to business owners.
Other contributions: Barbee sits on the board of directors of the Center for Anti-Violence Education, guiding program strategy and engaging in workshops.
Vice chair of strategy and transactions, EY
Scope of work: As vice chair of strategy and transactions for Ernst & Young Americas (EY), Mitch Berlin leads 8,500 professionals and aims to consistently increase the strategy and transactions business. Berlin is the Americas executive sponsor to Unity, the accounting company’s professional network for LGBTQ+ individuals and allies.
Biggest professional win: Berlin recently spearheaded a survey of 500 LGBTQ+ employees across the U.S., assessing their sentiments of the LGBTQ+ workforce and aiming to better organizations’ understanding of the population.
Other contributions: Berlin launched the EY strategy and transaction talent show, raising more than $700,000 for charities and LGBTQ+ organizations. He served on Lincoln Center president’s council, sponsoring the Pride Lights event in 2023.
Managing director of programs and research, Out Leadership Scope of work: Jane Barry-Moran is managing director of programs and research at the LGBTQ+ business network Out Leadership. She has produced global reports and presented her research to tens of thousands of senior LGBTQ+ leaders. Barry-Moran also chairs Out Women+, a global network of LGBTQ+ women executives.
Biggest professional win: Barry-Moran was involved with Out Leadership’s global board diversity report that rst measured the impact on board diversity policies for all NASDAQ-listed companies. Leading the talent development program for emerging leaders, she has also worked with thousands of young professionals.
Other contributions: Barry-Moran sits on the board of the nonpro t Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding and volunteers at nonpro ts supporting LGBTQ+ rights and literacy.
Partner, Cravath, Swaine & Moore
Scope of work: Gary Bornstein is partner at the law company Cravath, Swaine & Moore, co-heading the litigation department. As the rst gay department head in rm history, he co-manages nearly 200 attorneys and is regularly called upon to lead various commercial disputes.
Biggest professional win: Bornstein led a victory for a client, Epic Games, in an antitrust litigation against Google. Obtaining a unanimous jury verdict in Epic Games’ favor in December 2023, he was lead trial counsel, presented the opening and closing statements, and handled numerous key direct and cross-examinations.
Other contributions: Bornstein, who has served as a partner liaison to Cravath’s LGBTQ+ af nity group since its inception, is also a member of the International Bar Association.
Troy Boyle
Senior vice president of care management, Institute for Community Living
Scope of work: Troy Boyle is senior vice president of care management at the Institute for Community Living, a behavioral health nonpro t. In this role, he oversees health home programs and provides housing, support and behavioral health services to those suffering from HIV or mental health challenges.
Biggest professional win: Boyle led the Institute for Community Living’s launch of the $2.3 million pilot program “Step-Down Treatment Ensures Personal Success,” which offers programs for clients who have progressed in recovery and require less intense services.
Other contributions: Boyle provides pro bono traumainformed counseling to uninsured LGBTQ+ individuals and is also a board member of the nonpro t Wakeland Opportunities for Affordable Housing.
Julia Casteleiro
Partner, Nixon Peabody
Scope of work: Julia Casteleiro helps developers navigate all aspects of affordable housing transactions as a partner in the law rm Nixon Peabody’s affordable housing group. Guiding clients throughout transactions on a national scale, she also co-chairs the LGBTQ+ resource group and chairs mental health and wellbeing initiatives.
Biggest professional win: During her rst year as partner, Casteleiro successfully managed a closing transaction that preserved more than 2,000 units of affordable housing with a nearly $1 billion budget.
Other contributions: Casteleiro is a member of the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association and actively participates with the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund name change clinic. In addition, she provides guidance for other attorneys in the rm’s New York City of ce.
Founder and chief executive of cer, SCCS Group
Scope of work: Stephanie Cesario founded and launched SCCS Group in 2020, where she serves as chief executive of cer. The business is 100% womanowned and dedicated to community-based development, including thoughtful housing solutions, cultural and nonpro t development, institutional growth and renovation and restoration of capital assets.
Biggest professional win: Cesario has helped SCCS Group develop a working vision and intentional core values as part of a culture that de nes how the company manages projects, establishes relationships and generates new business.
Other contributions: Cesario, who sits on the board of directors for Habitat for Humanity International, is also a member of the Urban Land Institute, a crossdisciplinary network of real estate and land use experts.
Partner, Razor Consulting
Scope of work: Guy Cleveland is a partner at Razor Consulting, an outsourced business development company. He is charged with connecting key players in the design, construction and real estate industry, which results in signi cant growth prospects.
Biggest professional win: Cleveland has made various connections that have led to lucrative business developments. As a result of his efforts — namely the hundreds of introductions he initiated — he has helped to generate millions of dollars in revenue.
Other contributions: Cleveland currently sits on the executive board of Children of Promise and previously served on the board of directors for Boys Town New York for nine years. He is also co-founder and vice president of the International Business Development Professionals.
Sean Ebony Coleman
Founder and executive director, Destination Tomorrow
Scope of work: Black transgender political activist Sean Ebony Coleman is founder and executive director of Destination Tomorrow. The nonpro t works to improve access to gender-af rming programs and health care resources for LGBTQ+ in-dividuals. Coleman has helped raise $15 million, built relationships with local businesses and aided in delivering services, including free HIV testing and PrEP referrals.
Biggest professional win: Coleman spearheads Gilead’s TRANScend Community Impact fund, identifying and delivering hundreds of thousands of dollars to dozens of trans-led and trans-focused organizations.
Other contributions: Coleman previously worked with Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson on the LGBTQ Policy Task Force, which has developed various queer-af rming policies.
Joe Solmonese Senior Vice President, Government Relations and Strategic Communications
Einstein congratulates our own Joe Solmonese
For being honored as one of the Crain’s New York Business 2024 Notable LGBTQIA+ Leaders. We proudly recognize Joe’s vision and leadership, and his tireless efforts to expand equity and access.
James Colgate
Partner, BCLP
Scope of work: James Colgate is a partner at the law rm BCLP, where he assists clients including developers, lenders, nonpro ts, institutions and public agencies on land use matters. Colgate’s projects represent hundreds of millions of dollars of construction in New York City.
Biggest professional win: Colgate served as land use counsel for the Hudson Companies in regarding a Hell’s Kitchen affordable housing project, with more than 50% of the units meant for formerly homeless individuals; 59 of these individuals are HIV/AIDS survivors and there are 44 affordable units for families.
Other contributions: Colgate coordinated BCLP’s pro bono support for LGBTQ+ organizations, including counsel on lease negotiations that will help establish a memorial center at the 1969 Stonewall Riots site.
Partner, Blank Rome
Scope of work: Beth Connors serves as a partner in the law rm Blank Rome’s real estate group. In this role, she runs single asset and portfolio deals and manages teams of more than 20 attorneys across practice groups. Connors oversees all aspects of these deals, from the rst letter of intent to the nal closing documents.
Biggest professional win: Connors’ leadership helped the rm successfully represent a New York-based investment advisor for real estate investment management services, acquiring 54 industrial and industrial service facility properties across ve states for $369 million in 2023.
Other contributions: Connors works with the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, an organization that assists transgender clients with legal name changes.
Partner, Willkie Farr & Gallagher
Scope of work: Charles Cording is a partner at the law rm Willkie Farr & Gallagher, involved in securities class actions, shareholder derivative litigation and other business disputes. He represents companies and executives in courts across the country.
Biggest professional win: Cording recently represented the management consulting company AlixPartners in its victory before the Supreme Court in an appeal de ning the scope of assistance U.S. courts may provide to international tribunals and courts.
Other contributions: Since 2010, Cording has been a captain and adviser to the New York City Pride Basketball League, launching the league’s Hall of Fame in 2023. He has also focused his pro bono practice on supporting LGBTQ+ causes, including in the immigration space.
Shareholder, Greenberg Traurig
Scope of work: Nicholas A. Corsano is a shareholder at the law rm Greenberg Traurig’s global labor and employment and litigation practice. He litigates discrimination claims, wage and hour issues and contract disputes. An active member of the rm’s LGBTQ+ equity af nity group, he counsels various clients on topics including diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, employee training and law, risk mitigation, wage compliance and leave laws.
Biggest professional win: Corsano has achieved dismissal of sex and disability discrimination claims at the motion to dismiss stage for a media client and executed interactive training addressing LGBTQ+ workplace issues.
Other contributions: Corsano served as networking and events chair of the LGBT Bar Association of Greater New York from 2017 to 2023.
Chief philanthropy of cer, God’s Love We Deliver
Scope of work: Stephen Covello is chief philanthropy of cer at the charity God’s Love We Deliver. He maintains a portfolio of 400 donors and cultivates new ones into the network, which have resulted in $75 million in contributions.
Biggest professional win: Holding 13 years of experience in his position and a volunteer for eight months prior, Covello oversees strategic planning and operations of fundraising initiatives to secure capital.
Other contributions: Covello co-chairs the LGBTQ+ Philanthropy Roundtable, which aims to advance equity and justice in New York City. He has also been involved with various Food is Medicine Coalition organizations and led the philanthropy track of the coalition’s national symposium.
Greenberg Traurig congratulates
Labor & Employment
his
Executive director, NewPride Agenda
Scope of work: Elisa Crespo is the executive director of New Pride Agenda, leading the organization in furthering the economic, health, racial and gender identity justice needs of marginalized LGBTQIA+ individuals in New York State. She works with elected of cials and communities to educate allies and the general public about the legal protection and rights of LGBTQIA+ individuals.
Biggest professional win: Crespo partnered with Columbia University to create an LGBTQ Civic Engagement survey that shaped New Pride Agenda’s priorities of public health, affordable housing, racial disparities and economic equity.
Other contributions: Crespo was recognized for her contributions to social change as listed in City and State’s New York City 2022 “40 under 40” list.
Associate, FXCollaborative
Scope of work: Chelsea Crisafulli has been an associate at the architecture, planning and interior design rm FXCollaborative since 2022. Bringing 12 years of experience to bear on complex projects, she has had a measurable impact in leading the rm’s transportation and infrastructure business development efforts.
Biggest professional win: Crisafulli was involved in the Chicago Union Station Concourse Improvement Project, which represented an expansion of the rm’s transportation and infrastructure sector practice and brought its work to a new region.
Other contributions: Crisafulli served on the Lehigh Alumni Pride Association’s executive board, where she worked with the university’s Of ce of Alumni Relations to build engagement and develop programming around The Pride Center for Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity.
Partner, McKinsey
Scope of work: Dani D’Amico is a partner at business management consultant McKinsey. Responsible for shaping strategic direction, analytics and regulatory responses, her experience spans banks, broker-dealers, exchanges and investment funds with a focus on business strategy, risk, capital and liquidity.
Biggest professional win: Following the failure of Archegos Capital Management, which resulted in multibillion-dollar losses for numerous banks, D’Amico led assessments and remediation programs for institutions to strengthen their counterparty credit risk practices.
Other contributions: She sponsors company efforts to improve the experiences of transgender and nonbinary individuals and serves on Lambda Legal’s board of directors. She organized and co-hosted the rst New York City Transgender Workplace Summit in 2023.
Jon Del Giorno
Founding member, Pitta Bishop & Del Giorno
Scope of work: Jon Del Giorno manages the consulting and government relations practice at the rm Pitta Bishop & Del Giorno, of which he is a founding member. Overseeing compliance services and procurement opportunities in this role, he advises on government contracting, budgeting, legislation and policy initiatives.
Biggest professional win: Partnering with the New York Historical Society, Del Giorno helped begin construction for the rst LGBTQ+ museum in the country. He also worked on behalf of the nonpro t Greenburger Center and enabled The Hope House, a treatment center for alleged felony-level offenders with mental illness.
Other contributions: Del Giorno mentors LGBTQ+ individuals and is state chair of the New York State League of Conservation Voters.
Partner, McDermott Will & Emery
Scope of work: Edward Diskant is partner at the international law rm McDermott Will & Emery. A former federal prosecutor and experienced trial lawyer, he helps clients navigate white-collar, litigation and regulatory enforcement, including matters involving the False Claims Act, anti-bribery laws and the Bank Secrecy Act.
Biggest professional win: In 2022, Diskant convinced prosecutors not to charge a national construction rm in what became a fraud and bribery prosecution involving dozens of defendants. In 2023, he helped lead a monthlong arbitration defending one a large global accounting rm against a nine- gure damages claim.
Other contributions: Diskant serves on McDermott’s diversity committee and is also a member of the LGBT Bar Association of New York, which operates various legal services.
Brendan Dougherty
Partner, Akerman
Scope of work: Brendan Dougherty is a partner at the law rm Akerman, which focuses on insurance coverage and insurance litigation. His work includes defending commercial insurance carriers with respect to various rst-party and third-party commercial insurance policies. Earlier, he was a community prosecutor with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Of ce in Atlanta as well as a community liaison.
Biggest professional win: He represented a major commercial property and casualty insurance carrier in a breach of contract and declaratory judgment lawsuit pertaining to business interruption losses resulting from the Covid pandemic, resulting in the dismissal of the suit.
Other contributions: Dougherty works with the Stonewall Bar Association, mentoring LGBTQ+ law students as they navigate graduate school and begin their legal careers.
Erin Drinkwater
Chief of government relations and strategic partnerships, MetroPlusHealth
Scope of work: Erin Drinkwater is chief of government relations and strategic partnerships at MetroPlusHealth, a health insurance plan mainly serving New Yorkers through governmentsponsored programs. She helps evolve government relations strategies and ensure access to quality affordable health care.
Biggest professionals: Drinkwater spearheaded the creation of MetroPlusHealth’s government affairs and strategic partnerships of ce. She has championed legislative initiatives, fostered community alliances, orchestrated collaborations with various governmental agencies and negotiated dozens of bills to reduce bureaucratic burdens and increase access to bene ts.
Other contributions: She sits on the board of managers of Fairview Lake YMCA Camps.
The year the rainbow Pride ag was designed. Each color of the ag has its own meaning: hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic and art, indigo for serenity and violet for spirit.
(GLBT Historical Society)
Leah Druckerman
Counsel, Venable
Scope of work: Leah Druckerman guides clients on matters of privacy, data security and contracting complexities as counsel at Venable, a rm providing legal services including regulatory, legislative and government affairs. As a data breach lawyer, she manages the cybersecurity incident response for clients in various industries.
Biggest professional win: She advises clients in technology, transportation, health care and presidential campaigns, among others.
Other contributions: Druckerman successfully facilitated the partnership between Venable and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund in order to provide pro bono legal services to low-income transgender individuals. She also mentors LGBTQ+ law students and speaks at other rms about how to be a supportive and effective ally to transgender colleagues.
Nicole Ferreira President, CPC Mortgage Company
Scope of work: Nicole Ferreira is president of the nonpro t CPC Mortgage Company, which offers Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and FHA licenses while bringing social impact to mortgage lending. She also helped Climate United, the company’s coalition with Calvert Impact and Self-Help Credit Union, win a $7 billion award from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Biggest professional win: At the New York City Housing Authority, Ferreira helped repair public housing units with sustainable upgrades and allow NYCHA access to capital markets for helping residents address mold, lead and other challenging living conditions.
Other contributions: Ferreira serves on the board of directors of the New York Housing Conference and is a member of the Association of Latino Professionals for America.
Arthur Fitting
LGBTQ+ program manager, VNS Health
Scope of work: Arthur Fitting is LGBTQ+ program manager at the home and community-based nonpro t VNS Health. He promotes culturally sensitive home care to thousands of New Yorkers and ensures that employees receive LGBTQ+ training. Fitting is also a member of the New York State Department of Health’s health equity council.
Biggest professional win: Fitting helped lead a project with the VNS Health Research Center and community organizations that has studied the lived experiences of aging LGBTQ+ New Yorkers, conducted focus groups and analyzed the data to address gaps in care.
Other contributions: Fitting has volunteered and been involved with organizations including the Gay-Lesbian Medical Association, the American Nurses Association and the NYC LGBT Community Center.
Katherine Forrest
Litigation partner and digital technology group chair, Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison
Scope of work: Katherine Forrest pioneered the digital technology group and arti cial intelligence practice at the law rm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. As litigation partner and digital technology group chair, she advises clients on legal and ethical concerns of AI and its development.
Biggest professional win: Forrest published “When Machines Can be Judge, Jury and Executioner: Justice in the Age of Arti cial Intelligence” as well as “Is Justice Real When ‘Reality’ is Not: The Construction of Ethical Systems in Virtual Worlds.”
Other contributions: Forrest is a member of the American Bar Association’s law and AI task force and is a governor of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Edward Van Saders leads Financial Operations and Business Strategy for CCS Fundraising. Edward has 30 years of experience in leadership roles across a broad range of start-ups, global media companies, and nonpro ts. In this role as Chief Financial Of cer, Edward oversees all nancial functions.
Prior to joining CCS, Edward was the Chief Strategy Of cer of a portfolio of privately owned media assets, leading nance, corporate development, and administration for 12 years. Previously, he served as Chief Financial Of cer of AccuWeather, the digital brand Heavy. com, and the environmental media company EcoMedia (subsequently sold to CBS). Earlier in his career, he held nancial leadership positions at NBCUniversal, News Corporation, and the Jim Henson Company.
Edward holds a BFA and a certi cate in nonpro t management from Marymount Manhattan College where he recently concluded a 9-year term on their Board of Trustees. Edward resides in Rockland County and Cape Cod with his husband and triplet daughters.
Mondaire Jones and Ritchie Torres were elected in New York’s 17th and 15th districts, respectively, in 2021. The rst openly gay congressmen of color, they helped make the 117th U.S. Congress the most diverse federal legislature in history.
(City & State NY)
Scott Freeswick
Vice president and chief pharmacy of cer, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Scope of work: Scott Freeswick oversees the pharmacy department at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, a cancer treatment and research institution that includes more than 600 employees working across 17 licensed pharmacies. He is also the executive sponsor of MSK’s LGBTQ+ Pride employee resource network.
Biggest professional win: During pandemic drug shortages, Freeswick quickly created a dashboard to predict usage rates and projected increase in patient volume. This data was then used to maintain an adequate drug supply and ensure reliable patient treatment.
Other contributions: Freeswick has been a volunteer member of The New York Blood Center’s institutional review board since 2005, ensuring ethical standards and regulations are met in research.
Matthew Freimuth
Partner, Willkie Farr & Gallagher
Scope of work: Matthew Freimuth is a partner in Willkie Farr & Gallagher’s litigation and intellectual property departments. A member of the law rm’s New York associates committee, he holds more than 20 years of experience representing companies in antitrust and IP disputes, complex commercial litigation and internal investigations. Biggest professional win: Freimuth secured an appellate win in the Tenth Circuit for Edwell in a trademark case, which held that the company could continue using its desired moniker. His victory garnered recognition in The American Lawyer’s Litigator of the Week column.
Other contributions: Freimuth recently secured a victory in the New York Court of Appeals on behalf of incarcerated persons challenging their conditions of con nement by the New York Department of Corrections.
Bringing nancial creativity and diverse perspectives to the C-suite
After starting your career in media, what made CCS a good t for you?
It truly is an amalgamation of my entire life and professional experiences. I oriented my career in the media business and thought that was my niche, but I’d always been enamored with the idea of working in a missiondriven organization.
I’d never worked in a professional services rm before, and I’m not “classically trained” in nance, but my early experience was my education. I was fortunate to have some extraordinary mentors, and I assembled a core skillset around nancial planning and analysis, controllership, M&A, corporate development and strategy development.
Also, and not insigni cantly, CCS prioritizes the whole-person perspective. This is the rst time in my career that my diversity as a gay man aligned with CCS’s commitment to offer diverse perspectives in the C-suite.
What is your proudest professional accomplishment?
I’m exceedingly proud to be able to contribute my skills as a corporate
nancial leader to grow a rm that supports the world’s best nonpro t organizations. Over the last three years, we’ve experienced the greatest arc of growth in the rm’s 77-year history. I’m really proud to have played a role in that.
Before I arrived, nance was a function. And now, I’d like to believe that it’s a cornerstone and a strategic advantage to how we’re continuing to grow our business.
What pillars de ne your approach to leadership?
I have what I call the four Cs. We start with Controllership—which is about having transparent, consistent business processes—and then we lean into Curiosity, approach everything with Creativity and ultimately excel at Communication. In everything I do, I try to be fair, honest, appropriately transparent and ultimately aggressive in pursuit of excellence.
Why is an inclusive culture so valuable to your company and its clients?
I joined the rm in 2021, and in 2022 I was invited to join the partnership as the rst openly LGBTQIA+ partner in the rm’s storied history. That’s pretty special to me. For most of my adult life,
it was against my grain to share, much less promote, my private life. Being an openly gay corporate executive is still an underrepresented voice, but I’ve learned to appreciate that representation matters.
Inclusivity is good for our rm. It’s good for our culture. And, just as important, it’s good for business because we serve some of the largest nonpro ts on the earth, and they’re looking for diverse perspectives to guide their work. Philanthropy represents all different backgrounds and priorities, and we want to be able to re ect that.
What advice would you give other leaders trying to foster a more inclusive workplace?
The rst step is to identify the hurdles an organization has to overcome to achieve an inclusive workplace. Why would someone describe your environment as not inclusive? You have to take the time to explore it until you arrive at the root, no matter how uncomfortable, and then decide to evolve. It has to be a priority; it can’t just be talk.
Chief executive of cer and founder, Phluid
Scope of work: Rob Garrett Smith is chief executive of cer and founder of Phluid, a genderfree clothing brand and business grounded in community, activism and education. His career spans 30 years, having worked in product development and supply chain management with companies including Macy’s, Levi’s and Nike before founding the Phluid Project in 2018.
Biggest professional win: In the past year, Smith has helped Phluid achieve 8,000 points of distribution ranging from Nordstrom and Target to airports and college bookstores.
Other contributions: Smith leads the corporate social responsibility committee as a member of the board of directors for Steve Madden. He also sits on the advisory board for the Bright Light Legacy Fund.
Deputy chief urban designer, New York City Department of City Planning
Scope of work: Sagi Golan is deputy chief urban designer at the New York City Department of City Planning. He provides strategic direction for large-scale projects including neighborhood rezonings, public realm and waterfront developments.
Biggest professional win: Golan spearheaded the Gowanus neighborhood rezoning in Brooklyn, which was approved in 2021 and is the result of years of working with community stakeholders, elected of cials and city and state agencies. The plan will generate jobs and more than 8,500 units of housing.
Other contributions: Golan served as a fellow at the Institute for Public Architecture as well as the Urban Design Forum, where he has been developing programs and cultivating interdisciplinary collaboration.
Gerardo Gomez Galvis
Counsel, Morrison Foerster
Scope of work: Gerardo Gomez Galvis’ practice at the global law rm Morrison Foerster includes white-collar criminal defense and corporate internal investigations. A member of the rm’s LGBTQ+ af nity group, he also advances recruiting efforts through the Lavender Law Conference and Career Fair.
Biggest professional win: Gomez Galvis has helped the monitorship team appointed by the Department of Justice and two multilateral development banks to oversee the conglomerate Odebrecht S.A. following a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act settlement.
Other contributions: Gomez Galvis is a board member for the Brazil-U.S. 40 and Under White Collar Lawyers Initiative, consisting of more than 170 lawyers across 50 law rms. His pro bono cases focus on LGBTQ+ political refugees seeking asylum.
President and chief executive of cer, Food Bank For New York City
Scope of work: Since Leslie Gordon assumed her position of president and chief executive of cer of Food Bank For New York City, the hunger-relief nonpro t’s annual food output has nearly doubled to almost 150 million pounds.
Biggest professional win:
Assuming her position during the pandemic, Gordon leveraged a diverse set of expertises across all business units in immediate response to the historically outsized need for food. While developing trust among a new team, she helped to increase the amount of food distributed and to build culture, talent, processes and support for the future.
Other contributions: Gordon serves as board director chair for the nonpro t Feeding New York State.
Senior brand manager, Moët Hennessy
Scope of work: Enzo Gouedar serves as senior director of Moët & Chandon at Moët Hennessy USA, the wines and spirits division of the renowned luxury goods company LVMH. As head of the U.S. brand, Gouedar oversees the team responsible for the execution of programming and activations across markets and channels to drive brand awareness and sales.
Biggest professional win: Gouedar led the Moët & Chandon Golden Globes 2024 partnership as well as Toast For A Cause, where the company matched donations to support those in the entertainment industry.
Other contributions: Gouedar is co-founder of The Bar, Moët Hennessy’s LGBTQIA+ employee resource group which provides educational resources and organizes events.
In GLAAD’s 2024 Social Media Safety Index, almost every major social media company received a failing grade regarding LGBTQ+ safety, privacy and expression online. (Los Angeles Blade)
Partner and head of the U.S business division and managing director of New York of ce, Withersworldwide
Scope of work: As a long-term partner at the law rm Withersworldwide, David Guin holds expertise representing family of ces, investment advisers and fund managers on various corporate and regulatory matters. He has spent more than a decade overseeing corporate, real estate, intellectual property, employment, data privacy and charities practices.
Biggest professional win: Under Guin’s leadership, the U.S. business division expanded into new practice areas and the New York of ce grew 25%, now including more women and LGBTQ+ lawyers.
Other contributions: Guin sits on the board of trustees for the Museum of the City of New York as well as the board’s diversity and collections subcommittees.
Partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Scope of work: Working to act as a resource for other queer lawyers, Jackie Hamilton is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati as well as one of few transgender individuals to become a partner at a “BigLaw” rm.
Biggest professional win: Hamilton led numerous deals in recent years, including one that closed in July 2022 where they advised the video game developer Bungie on its $3.6 billion acquisition by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Other contributions: Hamilton has worked pro bono on LGBTQ+ related litigation, including an amicus brief for employers in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Obergefell v. Hodges. They also helped the nonpro t Immigration Equality with cases involving the citizenship status of children of LGBTQ+ parents.
Chief human resource of cer, God’s Love We Deliver
Scope of work: Marla Hassner is chief human resource of cer for the charity God’s Love We Deliver, where she engages in employee relations, workplace training and diversity and inclusion. She ensures that all 200 employees feel supported and empowered under her guidance.
Biggest professional win: She has worked with her team to expand talent growth by adding 87 employees. During the pandemic, she prioritized on-site staff safety, provided uninterrupted meal services for clients and facilitated the transition to remote work.
Other contributions: Hassner previously served as board co-chair for the Empire State Pride Agenda and chaired the best practices committee for Open Finance, a platform for nancial service professionals industry to drive LGBTQ+ equality and diversity.
President, The Hayes Initiative
Scope of work: Anthony Hayes founded the LGBTQ+-owned and operated public affairs rm The Hayes Initiative, of which he is now president. He directed the National Center for Lesbian Rights on communications strategy following Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” settlement and collabor with The Ali Forney Center to combat LGBTQ+ discrimination in foster care.
Biggest professional win: Hayes advised New York City Football Club in building NYC’s rst-ever soccer stadium. The project, planned to be in Willets Point, Queens, is estimated to deliver the largest affordable housing project in 40 years and $6.1 billion in economic activity.
Other contributions: Hayes has served on the boards of the Human Rights Campaign and the grassroots organization Broadway Impact.
Founder and executive director, TransNewYork Scope of work: Gennifer Herley is founder and executive director of TransNewYork, a platform aiming to help others nd and express their gender identity. The nonpro t provides education and advocacy while promoting awareness of LGBTQ+ topics to schools, businesses and governments. Biggest professional win: Under Herley’s leadership, TransNewYork developed the workforce readiness program, which utilizes education and image-building to assist transgender attendees in preparing to return to work. She also helped implement the workplace inclusion education program, which provides on-site education to professionals on transgender allyship.
Other contributions: Herley is a member of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce and Stonewall Democrats New York City.
Edward Herrera
Chief nancial and operating of cer, Braven
Scope of work: Edward Herrera is chief operating of cer of Braven, a nonpro t partnering with universities and employees to prepare college students and graduates for their careers. He helps transform operational ef ciency, spearheads improved reporting and fosters a collaborative work environment. Herrera has helped Braven grow to more than 160 employees across three new of ces.
Biggest professional win: Herrera helped The Center, a historic LGBTQ+ community center, navigate nancial devastation during the pandemic. Other contributions: Herrera volunteers with the Zicklin School of Business LGBTQ+ program, where he has mentored students in navigating the business world and growing their leadership skills.
Chief nancial of cer, DonorsChoose
Scope of work: Geoff Hill is chief nancial of cer at DonorsChoose, a nonpro t serving public school students and teachers. He oversees nances, manages classroom resource procurement and partners with retailers to deliver more than $150 million in materials annually. Hill is responsible for a team of 40 as well as information technology and legal matters.
Biggest professional win: During the pandemic, Hill initiated negotiations and contracts providing teachers with vouchers to select and purchase the necessary resources instead of receiving material shipments. He managed the acceptance and liquidation of the largest-known cryptocurrency gift for DonorsChoose.
Other contributions: Hill is a board volunteer and co-treasurer of The Ali Forney Center.
Partner, Jenner & Block LLP
Scope of work: At the law rm Jenner & Block, Jason Hipp leads the human rights and global strategy practice. He guides multibillion-dollar cases and offers clients strategic guidance through various legal issues.
Biggest professional win: Hipp has recently orchestrated victories in national security matters; in one speci c case involving a business dispute where foreign government entities sought to freeze assets of a former government of cial, Hipp helped his client achieve a U.S. federal court dismissal due to the risk of revealing sensitive national security information.
Other contributions: Hipp is involved in Jenner & Block’s LGBTQ+ forum and mentor and sponsorship programs, connecting diverse associates with various contacts in efforts to promote retention and promotion.
Todd Johnson
Managing director and head of strategic design and process of AI Team, Morgan Stanley
Scope of work: Todd Johnson serves as managing director and head of strategic design and process within the arti cial intelligence team at the nancial services rm Morgan Stanley. His responsibilities include strategic oversight of structures and controls, collaborating with stakeholders and ensuring secure and compliant scaling of GenAI.
Biggest professional win: Johnson successfully managed Morgan Stanley’s AI and machinelearning projects Project Genome and Next Best Action, which have advanced the organization’s technological capabilities and driven business growth.
Other contributions: Johnson mentors emerging talent in the nancial services and startup sectors. He also serves on the board of directors for the nonpro t Karuna-USA.
Executive director of City Beet Kitchens, Project Renewal
Scope of work: Barbara Hughes is executive director of City Beet Kitchens, a social enterprise catering company under the umbrella of the nonpro t Project Renewal. She launched Project Renewal’s culinary arts training program, which provides training in the food service industry to adults with histories including homelessness, incarceration and substance abuse.
Biggest professional win: During the pandemic, she ensured City Beet Kitchens could continue to prepare meals for New Yorkers. They have catered nearly 200 events in 2024 alone, primarily for nonpro ts.
Other contributions: Hughes is board president for Catalyst Kitchens, a national network of nonpro ts promoting food service job training, and president emeritus of Treatment Action Group, an AIDS research and policy think tank.
By one estimate, 28% of Generation Z adults in the U.S. identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (CNN)
Director of behavioral health product development, VNS Health
Scope of work: Alex Karydi is the home health care services company VNS Health’s director of behavioral health product development. Recently, they helped secure federal funding for VNS’s community behavioral health clinic to treat individuals impacted by mental illness or substance use.
Biggest professional win: Karydi has played an instrumental role in developing and implementing VNS Health’s Safe Pathways suicide prevention program. Launched in early 2023, the program deploys peer specialists across the community to provide clinical support, connection with psychiatric resources and education to LGBTQ+ and BIPOC youth.
Other contributions: She is involved with the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center and a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
Associate principal, ZGF Architects
Scope of work: Keith Kennedy, associate principal at the architectural rm ZGF Architects, oversees and mentors a marketing team both locally and across seven locations. Over the past three years, his strategies to secure business and revenue for the company have generated more than $15 million annually.
Biggest professional win: Kennedy spearheaded the business development effort for the transformation of an of ce building into a commercial science facility. Collaborating with the design team and consultants, he aimed to fuel expansion into renovation work locally and nationally.
Other contributions: In 2021, Kennedy founded the outreach committee at Build Out Alliance, an organization promoting queer inclusivity, where he is also currently a volunteer and member of the board of directors.
Vice president for design, The Central Park Conservancy
Scope of work: Nicholas Koster is vice president for design at The Central Park Conservancy, a nonpro t which has overseen the investment of approximately $1 billion in Central Park’s restoration. He ensures consistent project execution and specializes in the sustainable integration of New York City’s environment.
Biggest professional win: Koster is currently leading an effort to restore four public amenities inside the park, navigating the necessary public approvals and permitting to ensure that park goers can rely on them throughout the year.
Other contributions: Koster previously served as a visiting assistant professor at the Pratt Institute and currently serves on the programs committee of the New York Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Vice president and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging program manager, Webster Bank
Scope of work: Craig Johnson forms and executes the Webster Bank DEIB strategy. He collaborates with community partners representing sibling business resource groups to address initiatives impacting the commercial bank’s community.
Biggest professional win: He has worked with companies ranging from Prospanica and LGBTQ+ Network to Veterans on Wall Street, strategically designing and implementing partnerships to create a sustainable DEIB program. He also streamlined the bank’s rst bias interrupters workshop series and survey for colleagues.
Other contributions: Johnson currently serves on the City of Yonkers pride advisory board and has delivered nancial literacy to the Yonkers’ LGBTQ+ community.
Partner, King & Spalding
Scope of work: At the corporate law rm King & Spalding, Alvin Lee focuses on complex commercial litigation, mass torts and class-action defense. Involved in nancial services, energy, chemical, manufacturing and technology clients, he litigated matters regarding chain supply disruptions and force majeure declarations.
Biggest professional win: Lee served as lead counsel for the JPMorgan Texas energy crisis litigation, arising from a 2021 storm. Securing a win for the banking giant in a $71 million dispute, the court found that the storm did not qualify as a force majeure in renewable energy hedge agreements.
Other contributions: Lee served on the board of directors of the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association and co-authored the ACLU’s Know Your Rights guide for transgender prisoners.
Director of New York research, JLL
Scope of work: As director of New York research at the real estate company JLL, Andrew Lim leads efforts to develop nuanced understandings of the modern market, focusing on increased remote work and macroeconomic uncertainty. He also created a master database, improving market advisory that leverages survey, geospatial and big data.
Biggest professional win: Lim’s commentary has been published by news outlets including The New York Times, Bloomberg and the London Telegraph, reaching a global audience in countries including the U.S., Canada, Germany, Hong Kong and Brazil. Other contributions: Lim is part of JLL’s Building Pride: LGBTQ+ Network and supports organizations and charities, including the Ali Forney Center, God’s Love We Deliver and Immigration Equality.
Vice president and general counsel, All New York Title Agency
Scope of work: John Martin is vice president and general counsel of All New York Title Agency. He advises on all aspects of real estate issues and works closely with developers to build affordable and supportive housing units throughout New York.
Biggest professional win: Martin served as lead title insurance counsel for the development of Ingersoll Senior Residences with SAGE Center, a senior living environment that promotes diversity and safety for New York City’s growing elderly LGBTQ+ population.
Other contributions: A member of the board of directors of The Irish Arts Center, Martin also founded the White Plains St. Patrick’s Parade and has chaired the committees for all 25 parades since.
Partner, Norton Rose Fulbright
Scope of work: At the global law rm Norton Rose Fulbright, partner Ian McClatchey focuses on corporate matters, including governance, taxation, nance, restructuring, compliance, risk management, venture capital and succession planning.
Biggest professional win: McClatchey was involved in the successful representation of a private business in a multibilliondollar nancing transaction with a corporate restructuring and asset sale in more than 40 countries. Other contributions: McClatchey has been involved in pro bono matters, including the successful representation of LGBTQ+ current and former members of the Army, Air Force, Navy and National Guard challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act as applied to military bene ts provided by Title 10, Title 32 and Title 38 of the U.S. Code.
Partner and co-chair of the consumer nancial services practice, Hinshaw & Culbertson
Scope of work: At the law rm Hinshaw & Culbertson, Brian McGrath drives the 475-plusattorney rm’s growth. As partner and co-chair of the consumer nancial services practice, he plays a role in opening new of ces and works to attract diverse talent, including LGBTQ+ attorneys and staff.
Biggest professional win: Along with victories in court as an attorney, McGrath is co-chair of the strategic growth committee and was also involved in Hinshaw & Culbertson’s expansion. He opened the Dallas of ce, which doubled in headcount and is 40% diverse.
Other contributions: McGrath served on the New York City Bar LGBTQ rights committee and the Human Rights Campaign federal club council.
Head of product management for sustainability and infrastructure group, Apollo Global Management
Scope of work: Scott McMurtry heads product management for the global alternative asset manager Apollo Global Management’s sustainability and infrastructure group. Focusing on thought leadership and investor relations, he works with stakeholders and partners on climate nancing, energy transition and infrastructure solutions. McMurtry is also co-executive sponsor and former chair of Apollo Pride.
Biggest professional win: McMurtry has worked with the rm’s human capital team over the past year to ensure that surrogacy and fertility bene ts are available to all employees. Other contributions: McMurtry is an executive council member of the leadership program New York for McCombs.
The rst recorded drag ball in U.S. history was Harlem’s Hamilton Lodge Ball in 1869. (History.com)
Managing partner, Vishnick McGovern Milizio
Scope of work: Joseph Milizio, managing partner at the law rm Vishnick McGovern Milizio, provides legal counsel, representation and education for workplace discrimination, family rights and estate planning. He has advised LGBTQ+ rights organizations and helped establish CUNY’s Queens College’s LGBTQ+ anti-hate training.
Biggest professional win: Milizio co-founded the Suffolk County LGBTQ advisory board, helping ensure the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ Long Islanders. He has recently worked to protect transgender youth rights and helped LGBTQ+ clients cope with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Other contributions: Milizio is a founding member of the New York State Bar Association LGBTQ Law Section and a former co-chair and current committee member of the Nassau County Bar Association LGBTQ Committee.
Brand manager, Moët Hennessy
Scope of work: Jessica Miller is a brand manager for the wine brand Krug and Ruibnart owned by the conglomerate Moët Hennessy. She supports marketing strategy development and oversees program execution and activations across markets and channels in accordance with the Moët Hennessy USA 2030 Strategy. She also collaborates with stakeholders to forge long-term connections with consumers.
Biggest professional win: With the Culinary Institute of America, Miller co-led the creation of the Dom Pérignon scholarship fund in 2023 for the rst U.S. master’s degree program in the culinary arts, equipping students with fully funded-tuition and experiential learning.
Other contributions: Miller co-leads BAR, a LGBTQIA+ employee resource group of Moët Hennessy that provides educational resources and partners on inclusive brand activations.
Frankie Miranda
President and chief executive of cer, Hispanic Federation
Scope of work: Frankie Miranda is the rst openly gay president and chief executive of cer of the nonpro t Hispanic Federation. He has expanded programming to provide more than $33.5 million in Covid-related grants to hundreds of nonpro ts, launched disaster relief and resiliency projects in Puerto Rico and oversees the organization’s annual gala.
Biggest professional win: Miranda established the Advance Change Together (ACT) Initiative, a $1 million capacity-building program that empowers organizations to protect Latinx LGBTQ+ communities. In the rst year alone, the program awarded up to $50,000 to dozens of organizations.
Other contributions: Miranda sits on the Comcast corporate diversity, equity and inclusion advisory council and is a trustee of Fundación Banco Popular.
Carlos N. Molina
Vice president of marketing and communications, Amida Care
Scope of work: Carlos N. Molina serves as vice president of marketing and communications at the nonpro t health plan Amida Care. In this role, he directs and supervises all print, digital marketing and communications, including advertising, public relations, internal messaging, company website, social media, brochures, yers and newsletters.
Biggest professional win: In 2023, Molina spearheaded the bilingual “PrEP for Your LIfe” campaign, which focuses on HIV prevention and transgender health. The multi-year campaign aims to educate the transgender community — which is disproportionately impacted by HIV — on pre-exposure prophylaxis.
Other contributions: Molina has organized and currently leads the Trans PrEP Coalition, a group of New York City-based health and transgender-led organizations.
Senior director of strategic business development, Dealpath
Scope of work: As senior director of strategic business development for the real estate deal manager Dealpath, Joe Moskowitz manages millions of dollars in revenue and all industry partner relationships. He also works to deliver strategic new business and participates in various webinars, panels and conferences.
Biggest professional win: Moskowitz is responsible for Dealpath’s largest-ever single deal. He worked on a key partnership with a large global commercial real estate investment management rm, cementing Dealpath as a corporate real estate leader in the realms of deal management. Other contributions: Moskowitz is involved in the nonpro t Oscre, a real estate data standards organization where he was also recently asked to serve as the board’s vice chairperson.
Robert Niles-Weed
Partner of complex commercial litigation and appeals and strategic counseling practices, Weil, Gotshal & Manges
Scope of work: Robert NilesWeed is a partner at the law rm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, focusing on complex commercial litigation and appeals and strategic counseling practices. He manages cases ranging from bankruptcy, intellectual property and antitrust to mergers and constitutional and commercial disputes.
Biggest professional win: He won a First Amendment case for the nonpro t Upsolve in the Southern District of New York, allowing non-lawyers to offer legal advice to low-income individuals in debt collection cases.
Other contributions: Niles-Weed supports thousands of LGBTQ+inclusive classrooms nationwide as board chair of the nonpro t Hope in a Box, aiming to make rural educators and schools more inclusive.
Kristen Pecci
Associate principal, WB Engineers+Consultants
Scope of work: As associate principal and team leader at the energy and sustainability service company WB Engineers+Consultants, Kristen Pecci leads client relationships, ensures project success in terms of quality and pro tability and facilitates growth of direct reports.
Biggest professional win: Pecci’s promotion to team leader meant responsibility for a team of eight while simultaneously managing a more-than-40 site program of infrastructure upgrade projects. She also leads the engineering design team for the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center project, publicly opening in June 2024. Other contributions: For the past three years, Pecci has been a board member and outreach committee co-chair at the nonpro t Build Out Alliance, which promotes diversity in the design and construction industry.
John Quinn
Partner, Kaplan Hecker & Fink
Scope of work: As a partner and co-founder at the law rm Kaplan Hecker & Fink, John Quinn appears in federal and state courts on behalf of clients including celebrities, major tech companies and international law rms.
Biggest professional win: Quinn recently forged the settlement that resolved challenges to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Following a series of dismissals as the case progressed toward appeal, he developed a settlement strategy leveraging narrowing concessions in the state’s briefs into realities that would constrain the law and protect anti-bullying efforts.
Other contributions: He sits on the boards of the Ali Forney Center, an LGBTQ+ youth homeless shelter, and Broome Street Academy, a public charter high school for at-risk youth.
Head of litigation and disputes, Norton Rose Fulbright
Scope of work: Mark Robertson is responsible for marketing, assignments, events and education programs as head of litigation and disputes at the law rm Norton Rose Fulbright. He also co-chairs the rm’s pride committee.
Biggest professional win: Robertson represented a U.S. Presbyterian minister in an ecclesiastical court case. The ruling allowed same-sex marriage for Presbyterian ministers while continuing to act in their role, setting precedent for a future case that he won.
Other contributions: Robertson is a former member of the LGBTQ rights committee on the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He won asylum for LGBTQ+ immigrants and also supervises other lawyers in representing them accurately and effectively.
Julio Roman
Director of Latinx gay/bi men’s initiative, Latino Commission on AIDS
Scope of work: Julio Roman, director of the Latinx Gay/Bi Men’s Initiative at the Latino Commission on AIDS, manages a diverse team and engages in policy work. Connecting community organizations with governmental and academic institutions, he leads the annual New York State and New York City Latinx Gay/Bi and Trans Men Health Summit.
Biggest professional win: Roman has represented the Latinx community at the United Nations, advancing global dialogue and collaboration on HIV/AIDS prevention and care.
Other contributions: Roman is involved with organizations including the ARK of Freedom Alliance and the Puerto Rican Family Institute and also authored the memoir “Out of Space: Creating Safe Spaces in Unlikely Places.”
As of May, the American Civil Liberties Union was tracking 515 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in 41 U.S. states. (ACLU)
David W. Rosenthal
Medical director of Center for Young Adult, Adolescent and Pediatric HIV and medical director of Center for Transgender Care, Northwell Health
Scope of work: At Northwell
Health, David W. Rosenthal is the medical director at the Center for Young Adult, Adolescent and Pediatric HIV as well as the Center for Transgender Care. Managing a team of 25, he educates and treats patients with HIV, AIDS and other immune disorders.
Biggest professional win: Founder of the Center for Transgender Care, Rosenthal strategizes clinical, infrastructure, research and education initiatives and has developed LGBTQ+ curricular threads for undergraduate and graduate medical education.
Other contributions: Rosenthal is a board member for Allergists for Israel and board of trustees member of the synagogue Temple Beth Sholom.
Ronald Richter
Chief executive of cer and executive director, JCCA
Scope of work: Ronald Richter is chief executive of cer and executive director of JCCA, which provides mental health, education and child welfare services. He recently oversaw the opening of a satellite community mental health clinic in the Bronx.
Biggest professional win: Richter has worked to transform the child welfare agency into a wraparound child and family services and children’s behavioral health agency. Working to prevent deeper client involvement with the child welfare system, he has set a course for the organization’s future including new work ows, diverse staff and closer ties to communities.
Other contributions: Richter is board chair of the nonpro t Child Trends and board member of the New York State Coalition of Children’s Behavioral Health.
Design manager and senior associate, Gensler
Scope of work: Santiago Rivera is the design manager and senior associate for the design and architecture rm Gensler. He serves a diverse range of industries for clients including the International Center of Photography, Pratt Institute, the Ford Foundation and the ACLU.
Biggest professional win: Rivera led a team in designing the rst U.S. Café Joyeux, a chain promoting inclusion for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. He was also project manager for Dress for Success in Queens, leading a team of nine designers to create a safe space for women.
Other contributions: Rivera is a co-founding director of the nonpro t Build Out Alliance and previously served as an of ce leader for Gensler’s community impact initiative.
Director of constituent and government affairs, City of Yonkers
Scope of work: Michael Sabatino Jr. has been the director of constituent and government affairs for the City of Yonkers for the past ve years. In his prior role, he was the rst openly gay Yonkers City Council member.
Biggest professional win: Sabatino was not the endorsed democratic candidate, yet won a three-way primary race and accumulated 51% of the votes. He subsequently emerged victorious in the general election, securing 52% of the votes.
Other contributions: Sabatino is a member of the 9th Judicial Access to Justice LGBTQ Committee, a trustee of the Yonkers Public Library and an adviser to the Yonkers Pride board and festival.
Clinical director of sexual health, Callen-Lorde Community Health Center
Scope of work: Marcus Sandling leads a supportive approach that includes prevention, treatment and screening for sexually-transmitted infections. He is also clinical co-director of a long-acting injectables program to curb HIV transmission in New York.
Biggest professional win: Sandling, a physician, is involved in a recent expansion into downtown Brooklyn, creating a next-generation LGBTQ+ health care facility focused on emerging demands of diverse communities. He trains workers in LGBTQ+ health through the Keith Haring Nurse Practitioner Fellowship.
Other contributions: Sandling is active in the medical association Infectious Diseases Society of America and writes and speaks on HIV prevention in conferences, journals and the media.
Rod Sayegh
Managing director and head of digital strategy, Fiduciary Trust International
Scope of work: Rod Sayegh leads strategic direction and implementation of virtual channels to achieve operational ef ciencies and transparency for wealth advisors and clients.
Biggest professional win: Sayegh participated in a Pride Month webinar about nancial planning for LBGTQ+ couples, helping create the Changing Faces of Wealth education program, which has reached more than 8,000 nancial professionals.
Other contributions: Sayegh leads FTI’s New York City Chapter of Pride and helped develop solutions to address diverse client needs. He cofounded and previously served on the board of the LGBTQ+ Fire Island Artist Residency.
Director of research and grants management, Amida Care
Scope of work: As director of research and grants management at the health insurance agency Amida Care, Luis Scaccabarrozzi manages the program, quality and research contracts. He has led programs and implementations for New York State Medicaid, designating funding for those at risk of HIV.
Biggest professional win: Scaccabarrozzi has quadrupled funding through strategic planning and expanded the reach of programs for LGBTQ+ communities and people of color, focusing on social determinants of health. He also works with political asylum applicants focused on HIV status, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Other contributions: Involved in nonpro ts including Aid for AIDS and Aid for Life, he advocates for health equity and policies that bene t vulnerable communities.
Todd Sears
Founder and chief executive of cer, Out Leadership
Scope of work: Todd Sears is chief executive of cer of Out Leadership, founding the LGBTQ+ business network 14 years ago and helping transform it into a global platform today fostering LGBTQ+ equality. Based in New York, Sears works with leading companies to develop talent, publish actionable research and drive business.
Biggest professional win: Sears has helped engage more than 150 companies in business with summits across ve continents, publishing more than 30 signi cant pieces of research and thought leadership.
Other contributions: Sears previously sat on the board of the human rights organization Lambda Legal and currently sits on the boards of the Williams Institute of UCLA, Palette Fund, Global Equality Fund and North Carolina Community Foundation.
Andy Seibert
Founder and chief executive of cer, Imprint
Scope of work: Andy Seibert in 2013 founded Imprint, a fullservice content marketing agency, where he now is chief executive of cer. He has previously worked at companies including American Express, GE Capital and SmartMoney.
Biggest professional win: At a recent content marketing conference, Content Marketing World, with sessions, workshops and industry forums, Imprint won agency of the year and Seibert was involved in conversations about Small Business Stories, a program to support small businesses from underserved communities.
Other contributions: Working to feature LGBTQ+ leaders, Seibert helped Imprint volunteer with the nonpro t Start Small Think Big and also become certi ed as a diverse-owned business in 2018 by the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.
Allyn L. Shaw
Managing director and chief operating of cer of consumer technology, Wells Fargo
Scope of work: Allyn L. Shaw executes technology strategy for the nancial services company Wells Fargo as managing director and chief operating of cer of consumer technology. He provides services to consumer banking, lending and small-business users throughout 5,300 retail branches.
Biggest professional win: Shaw ascended into his position without a college degree, instead leveraging his seven years of professional experience from his tenure in the telecommunications industry. Other contributions: Shaw is board chair of directors for the nonpro t Out and Equal and audit chair for the New York City Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center. He is also an elected member of the victory campaign board for the human rights group LGBTQ+ Victory Fund.
Lambda Legal, founded in 1973, is the rst (and now the oldest) human rights organization focusing on LGBTQ+ protections. (CNN)
Keith Sherman
President, Keith Sherman & Associates Public Relations
Scope of work: As president of the eponymous communications rm Keith Sherman & Associates Public Relations, Keith Sherman is responsible for ensuring positive results for current clients while generating new projects.
Biggest professional win: During the Covid-19 pandemic, Sherman was able to keep the entire staff and of ce together. Today, his rm is part of various cross-industry projects as well as decades-long client and staff relationships.
Other contributions: Sherman has mentored young professionals in his involvement with the Point Foundation and has guided fellow executives about their respective organizations, including Out Leadership, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Art Students League of New York. He also served on the board of BAFTA for more than a decade.
Joe Solmonese
Senior vice president of government relations and strategic communications, Monte ore Health System
Scope of work: Joe Solmonese oversees Monte ore Health System’s work at federal and state levels. He manages all aspects of messaging approaches, collaborating with and lobbying government of cials to secure legislation, funding, public policy and support.
Biggest professional win: He was involved in obtaining increased funding for programs including Monte ore’s School Health Program, a comprehensive school health program in the U.S.
Other contributions: He advocated for LGBTQ+-friendly policies as president of the Human Rights Campaign, advocating for marriage equality nondiscrimination policies, support toward LGBTQ+ businesses, passage of federal hate crimes legislation and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Jared Stanisci
Partner, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft
Scope of work: Jared Stanisci is a partner at the law rm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. Practicing complex commercial and securities litigation, he represents nancial institutions and public and private corporations among industries including consulting, real estate and information technology.
Biggest professional win: Stanisci obtained complete dismissal of mortgage fraud charges against Paul Manafort, who had served a prison sentence after pleading guilty in federal prosecutions, brought by the New York County District Attorney’s Of ce. He successfully defended this ruling on appeal to the First Department and the New York Court of Appeals.
Other contributions: Stanisci chairs Cadwalader’s LGBTQ+ network and leads the organization’s partnership with Legal Services NYC.
Executive vice president and chief corporate affairs of cer, P zer
Scope of work: Sally Susman leads engagement with stakeholders and oversees external communications, corporate responsibility, global policy, government relations, patient advocacy and investor relations.
Biggest professional win: Susman helped P zer manage their Covid-19 response and convey the safety and ef cacy of its vaccine by persuading scientists to post intellectual property on their website. In doing so, the chief executive of cer and scientists were dubbed “educators in chief.”
Other contributions: She is co-chair of the humanitarian aid organization The International Rescue Committee and author of “Breaking Through: Communicating to Open Minds, Move Hearts and Change the World.”
Partner, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft
Scope of work: Linda Swartz chairs the law rm’s tax group and co-chairs the global diversity committee. Involved in strategic business and cultural priorities as a member of the management committee, she has launched and currently leads numerous diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Biggest professional win: Swartz advised global nancial institutions, including the Alternative Reference Rates Committee, on risks and solutions arising from the 2023 transition away from the London Interbank Offered Rate to the Secured Overnight Financing Rate benchmark.
Other contributions: Swartz’s pro bono practice includes co-chairing the nonpro t Incubator, which incorporates and obtains taxexempt status for aspiring organizations that represent diverse, local, national and global missions.
Matt Tepper
Executive vice president of cities and public affairs, BerlinRosen
Scope of work: Matt Tepper is executive vice president of the public relations rm BerlinRosen’s cities and public affairs practice. He leads business development and directly manages a team of 35 people to oversee strategy for a slate of clients.
Biggest professional win: In 2022, Tepper ran the awardwinning campaign to open the new $550 million David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center. He partnered with the performing arts theater to manage a project team that focused on equity, access and community as well as cultural revitalization following the pandemic.
Other contributions: Tepper contributes to various nonpro t theater organizations and serves as a mentor to young people interested in entering the public affairs industry.
Mark Thompson
Executive vice president, Capalino
Scope of work: Mark Thompson is executive vice president of the business development service Capalino. Working to secure millions of dollars in nonpro t funding and helping businesses navigate public approvals, he brings expertise in zoning matters, municipal service delivery and community relations to clients including The High Line and Guggenheim Museum.
Biggest professional win: He worked with the advocacy movement Fair Futures to build a coalition of more than 100 nonpro ts, child welfare agencies, foundations and advocates.
Other contributions: Thompson is a board member of the Stonewall Community Development Corporation. He previously served as president and currently serves on the executive committee of the Tilden Democratic Club.
Director in FIC nancing, Deutsche Bank
Scope of work: Jon Tilli is a director on the commercial real estate lending team based in New York. He is responsible for generating commercial mortgagebacked securities and balance sheet loans. Tilli heads a team facilitating origination and assists with special projects, pipeline and portfolio management for the real estate platform.
Biggest professional win: Tilli was instrumental in forming the largest commercial real estate LGBTQ+ conference in the tri-state area.
Other contributions: Tilli promoted Deutsche Bank’s participation in the World Economic Forum’s Partnership for Global LGBTI Equality. He is also global chair of dbPride at Deutsche Bank, overseeing LGBTQ+ inclusion and advocacy worldwide and managing global partnerships in the eld.
Patrick Toomey
Partner, BSG
Scope of work: Patrick Toomey is a partner at the marketing research and consultants rm BSG Partners. He has developed successful strategies for the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Future Forward USA Action.
Biggest professional win: Toomey helped defeat the August 2023 Ohio state ballot question, known as Issue 1, that was developed by anti-abortion activists and would have required a 60% vote on future constitutional amendments. He also expanded the signature distribution requirement for citizen-initiated amendments and eliminated the signature cure period.
Other contributions: Toomey works with various nonpro ts including the Human Rights Campaign, Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation and Thorn.
Edward Van Saders
Chief nancial of cer and managing director, CCS Fundraising
Scope of work: Edward Van Saders is chief nancial of cer and managing director and leads nancial operations, strategy, information technology and business affairs for CCS Fundraising, a consulting rm serving nonpro t clients across all sectors. Managing a team of 12, he oversees a nine- gure budget.
Biggest professional win: Van Saders, who helped bring on a minority private equity partner after a 15-month process, has seen the size of the organization double under his leadership. Other contributions: Involved in nonpro t community theaters, Van Saders is a board member of Antrim Playhouse and nancial chair of Elmwood Playhouse. He also previously sat on the board of trustees of the Rockland Country Pride Center.
A 2023 study found that 25% of LGBTQ+ people reported being in fair or poor health, compared to 18% of non-LGBTQ+ people. (KFF)
Partner, Arnold & Porter
Scope of work: A partner in the law rm’s product liability practice, Angela Vicari is experienced in defending pharmaceutical, medical device and biotech companies in product liability and commercial litigation.
Biggest professional win: As counsel to Sandoz, Vicari defended the pharmaceutical company in a contract case involving contested payments related to the development of a generic drug. Leading a team of six attorneys, she helped secure dismissal of all claims in federal court.
Other contributions: Vicari co-chairs the rm’s Pride af nity group and national hiring committee. She also represents clients on transgender and LGBTQ+ matters pro bono and mentors women’s basketball students at New York University.
Krista Whitman
Senior vice president and chief operating of cer, Outreach Development Corporation
Scope of work: Krista Whitman oversees daily operations of programs in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island and more than 350 members of staff at Outreach Development, a nonpro t that aims to develop and deliver quality evidence-based behavioral and integrated medical health services.
Biggest professional win: Whitman facilitated the opening of a new opioid treatment program to address the need for methadone and drug treatment services throughout New York. The program received a three-year accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities for its ef cacy, ef ciency and quality service.
Other contributions: Whitman is a leader on the organization’s justice, equity, diversity and inclusion committee and serves as the agency’s LGBTQIA+ coordinator.
Shannon Whittington
Clinical director of gender af rmation program, VNS Health
Scope of work: Shannon Whittington is clinical director of VNS Health’s gender af rmation program, where she recruits, trains and supports home health clinicians caring for transgender and nonbinary patients following gender-af rmation surgery. Under her leadership, GAP has trained more than 800 clinicians while helping patients through their transition.
Biggest professional win: She advanced transgender health research, assisting in the development of VNS Health/ Columbia University School of Nursing’s proposal for a ve-year NIH-funded study. The ndings will aim to improve patient care and knowledge of gender-af rming surgery.
Other contributions: Whittington has authored “LGBTQ+: ABC’s For Grownups.” She is also on TransNewYork’s board of directors.
Senior vice president of corporate social responsibility, Warner Bros. Discovery
Scope of work: As senior vice president of corporate social responsibility at Warner Bros. Discovery, Dennis Williams manages global philanthropic strategies and sustainability initiatives. He is charged with using the media conglomerate’s resources to aid marginalized and vulnerable communities.
Biggest professional win: In a previous role at HBO, Williams worked with the human resources bene ts team to address speci c support and help drive the company to expand familyplanning bene ts to LGBTQ+ employees.
Other contributions: Williams helped legalize gestational surrogacy through the ChildParent Security Act in New York State, testifying before Albany politicians and urging them to pass the legislation. He also sits on The Fund for Public Schools board.
Assistant general counsel of compliance in the Americas, Lendlease
Scope of work: Erica Young provides strategic guidance at the construction and real estate company regarding legal and compliance risks. She assists in the development, communication and enforcement of organizational policies and procedures.
Biggest professional win: Young chairs Lendlease’s Pride employee resource group, which hosted a Pride Week panel touching on topics including LGBTQ+ employees’ experience with bene t offerings. She worked to nd additional options and provide access to family-building and fertility services for employees who may otherwise not have received coverage.
Other contributions: Young is a member of the New York City Bar Association, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics, and the Construction Industry Ethics & Compliance Initiative.
Notice of Qualification of GUILD GARAGE GROUP LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/15/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 10/11/23. Princ. office of LLC: 55 Hudson Yards, 29th Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808-1674. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, Dover Office, 401 Federal St., Ste. 3, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
NO SOUL FOR SALE LLC Arts of Org filed w/SSNY 03/27/2024. Office: NY Co. SSNY designated agent for process and shall mail copy to 44 SAINT MARKS PL, #4, NY, NY10003. Purpose: any lawful act."
Notice of Qualification of GSO CAPITAL PARTNERS GP L.L.C. Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/09/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 09/25/15. Princ. office of LLC: 345 Park Ave., 31st Fl., NY, NY 10154. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to c/o Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Jeffrey W. Bullock, Secy. of State, Div. of Corps., John G. Townsend Bldg., 401 Federal St. - Ste. 4, Dover, DE 19901. Purpose: Any lawful activity
Notice of Formation of BEING UNBOUND MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELING PLLC
Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 02/15/24. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to; 70 Park Terrace East, Apt 4H, New York, NY 10034.
JOHNORR77@GMAIL.COM
Purpose: Any lawful activity
Notice of Formation of RWP Bar and Grill LLC. Arts of Org filed with Sec'y of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/9/23. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against LLC to Rocket Corporate Services Inc., 2804 Gateway Oaks Dr., Ste 100, Sacramento, CA 95833. P/B/A: 330 W 28th St., 18A, NY, NY 10001. Purpose: Any Lawful Act."
Notice of Formation of FAIRVIEW HOUSING CLASS B, LLC
Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/17/24. Office location: NY County. Princ. office of LLC: 30 Hudson Yards, 72nd Fl., NY, NY 10001. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co., 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of formation of Limited Liability Company (“LLC”). Name: Good Co Residential LLC Articles of Organization filed with the Secretary of State of the State of New York (“SSNY”) on May 28, 2024. N.Y. office location: New York County. The SSNY has been designated as agent of the LLC upon whom process against it may be served. The SSNY shall mail a copy of any process to Good Co Residential LLC, c/o The Domain Companies LLC, 120 Broadway, Suite 1340, New York, New York 10271. Purpose/character of LLC is to engage in any lawful act or activity.
Notice of Formation of KALUMIPROP LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/31/24. Office location: NY County. United States Corporation Agents, Inc., designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to: 7014 13th Avenue, Suite 202, Brooklyn, NY 11228. Purpose: Any lawful activity
Notice of Formation of QUILCHENA PARK LEGAL LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on4/19/24. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to 219 E. 2nd Street Apt 5B, NY, NY 10009. Purpose: Any lawful activity
Notice of Qualification of THEOREM PARTNERS LLC Appl. for Auth. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 05/15/24. Office location: NY County. LLC formed in Delaware (DE) on 09/26/13. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to Corporation Service Co. (CSC), 80 State St., Albany, NY 12207-2543. DE addr. of LLC: c/o CSC, 251 Little Falls Dr., Wilmington, DE 19808. Cert. of Form. filed with Secy. of State, 820 N. French St., 10th Fl., Wilmington, DE 19801. Purpose: Any lawful activity.
Notice of Formation of THEVOZ & PARTNERS, LAW FIRM, PLLC. Arts of Org filed with Secy of State of NY (SSNY) on 11/22/23. Office Location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent upon whom process may be served and shall mail copy of process against PLLC to 1239 Broadway, Ste 1005, New York, NY, US 10001. Purpose: any lawful act.
Notice of Formation of AG PARATUS LLC Arts. of Org. filed with Secy. of State of NY (SSNY) on 5/16/24. Office location: NY County. SSNY designated as agent of LLC upon whom process against it may be served. SSNY shall mail process to 228 Park Ave South, #196188, NY, NY 10003.
Purpose: Any lawful activity
Nick Garber
New York City is a step closer to implementing the desperately awaited, middlingly received tax break for a ordable housing developments that was approved in this year’s state budget to replace the bygone 421-a program.
Mayor Eric Adams’ administration on June 14 announced that developers can register online to receive bene ts through the new 485-x tax break, and submit letters of intent to qualify for the ve-year extension of the old 421-a bene t that was also part of the state budget. Both the 485-x and 421-a portals are now live on the city’s Housing Preservation and Development Department website.
All projects participating in 485-x must ll out the registration form within six months of starting construction if the start date was on or before April 20, 2024. Projects that started construction be-
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have stepped up to the plate, providing the same family-building bene ts to gay couples that they o er to heterosexual employees. Indeed, companies see such benets and programs not only as key to attracting and retaining employees but as essential to their productivity and job satisfaction — and ultimately, their contribution to the success of the company itself.
According to the state Department of Health, more than 1 million New Yorkers identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community.
In 2020 national health policy organization KFF, which is headquartered in San Francisco, found that 74% of U.S. companies that o er health insurance coverage to opposite-sex spouses also provided coverage to same-sex spouses, up from 43% in 2016.
In addition, rms are taking steps to ensure employees who identify as transgender can receive appropriate and a rming care. e Human Rights Cam-
tween June 15, 2022, and April 20, 2024, must register by midNovember. As for the 421-a extension, developers must submit letters of intent by Sept. 12.
Actual applications for the new 485-x tax break are not yet available, but the city will launch them by the end of the year and make the rst approvals in 2025, City Hall said in a press release.
As construction lagged following the expiration of 421-a two years ago, the Adams administration pushed hard in Albany this year to secure the new tax breaks — along with another incentive for o ce-to-residential conversions that also started implementation this month.
Details about the tax breaks are on the HPD website, largely spelling out the rules already set by state lawmakers earlier this year.
“Now, across the country, people are protected by antidiscrimination laws and are part of the American family and workforce. We are seeing employer’ policies catch up to the modern understanding of inclusion.”
A recent survey of 1,000 members of the LGBTQ+ community by fertility bene ts company Progyny, which is based in Manhattan, found that even when their workplace o ered fertility coverage, 68% said they were unable to access it because it required precerti cation or a medical diagnosis of infertility.
Progyny, which works with employers to provide fertility and family-building bene ts, largely in the metro area, has been growing, which it attributes to employers’ desire to provide coverage such as IVF and surrogacy bene ts to all employees even if their existing insurance plan does not. Founded in 2015 with just two clients, Progyny went public in 2019 and today has 460 self-insured employer clients.
“We know the LGBTQ+ population represents an increasingly larger percentage of the world, and it’s important for us to be inclusive of that group within our workplace.”
Kate Tekker,
Prudential global rewards and HR operations
paign’s 2023 Corporate Equality Index found that 73% of Fortune 500 companies and 94% of all the companies it rated last year provide transgender-inclusive health insurance coverage, compared with none in 2002.
“A lot of exclusionary policies did not consider LGBTQ people part of the American family 20 to 30 years ago,” said civil rights attorney Peter Friedman-Romer.
e 485-x program grants tax exemptions of up to 40 years for projects that include a ordable units, with the exact bene t depending on the number of a ordable units and the location of the building. e program also sets wage rates that were crucial in securing union support, including a $40 per-hour minimum for construction workers on large projects of 100 units or more.
e 421-a extension, meanwhile, allows projects to qualify for the old tax break if they are completed before June 15, 2031 — ve years past the previous 2026 deadline. e state budget also tweaked 421-a to eliminate an a ordability scheme unpopular among housing advocates that granted the bene ts for projects that included units renting at 130% of the area median income — meaning that developers must choose more affordable rents to qualify for the extended tax break.
e new 485-x got a muted reception from the real estate industry, whose leaders predicted it will produce less rental housing than 421-a did. Some developers have announced they can no longer build planned projects due to the program’s higher wage and stricter a ordability rules, although the full e ect of the tax break remains to be seen.
Jersey. In 2022 the company launched its Building Families program, a bene ts package that removes nancial barriers to surrogacy, adoption and IVF and o ers 26 weeks of paid parental leave. Another program, Fertility Out Loud, provides resources for workers trying to build a family, including speci c resources for LGBTQ+ employees.
“Every one of our client employers has a fully inclusive bene t that covers the LGBTQ population,” said CEO Peter Anevski. “When they realize that under their original [insurance] plan it’s restricted, they are happy to adopt a bene t that includes everyone.”
One of those clients is Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a Switzerlandbased drug company specializing in reproductive medicine, gastroenterology and urology. In the U.S., Ferring has 1,000 employees, half of them in Parsippany, New
As a company, one of Ferring’s goals is to reach a diverse set of patients, said Purvi Tailor, vice president of human resources. And the company also wants to attract diverse talent. “ e whole notion of inclusion is part of the business we’re in, and it’s very important to demonstrate that as an employer.”
Prudential Financial, meanwhile, has long been a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, joining in briefs to the Supreme Court in the Obergefell case, which codi ed same-sex marriage, and more recently in the Bostock case, which dealt with Title VII. Prudential, which has 9,000 employees in the metro region, provides fertility bene ts to all regardless of sexual
orientation.
“We know the LGBTQ+ population represents an increasingly larger percentage of the world, and it’s important for us to be inclusive of that group within our workplace,” said Kate Tekker, Prudential’s head of global rewards and HR operations.
Bene ts and culture are bottomline issues for employers. At professional services rm Accenture, which employs 742,000 workers worldwide and operates an innovation hub on Manhattan’s West Side, equal access to insurance coverage and family-building bene ts for same-sex partners and/or recognized domestic partners is a given. ose same bene ts are available to trans employees along with mental health bene ts and medically necessary surgical procedures related to gender reassignment.
“We foster a culture and a workplace in which all our people feel a sense of belonging, are respected and are empowered to do their best work,” said Beck Bailey, Accenture’s global chief diversity ofcer. “ ese e orts are one of the
e Adams administration appeared happier than anyone about the housing deal, which gave the city much of what it asked for.
Maria Torres-Springer, the deputy mayor for housing, said in a statement June 14 that the tax breaks are “powerful new tools to address the housing crisis, and the city is wasting no time in putting them into action.”
many factors that help us attract the most innovative and talented people in our industry.”
One employer being asked to do more, however, is New York City, which was sued in May for denying fertility bene ts to Corey Briskin, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s o ce. Briskin and his husband wanted to conceive a child with the help of an egg donor, IVF and a surrogate. Represented by Romer-Friedman, the civil rights attorney, the couple led a class-action suit on May 9 noting that the city provides such benets to female employees and male workers with female partners. However, the city’s de nition of infertility — the inability to conceive through intercourse or intrauterine insemination for 12 consecutive months — inevitably excludes male couples. e city, which has 60 days to respond to the complaint, had not responded as of early last week.
In response to the lawsuit, City Council member Lynn Shulman, who is chair of the council’s health committee, has introduced a bill that would extend coverage for fertility bene ts to city employees who can’t meet the local government’s current de nition of infertility. Still, the landscape is clearly improving for LGBTQ+ employees as more and more employers expand fertility coverage to include them, as well as add bene ts for trans employees, and there is every reason to expect the trend will continue.
e Human Rights Campaign’s annual survey of corporate equal rights, which measures, among other things, the level of bene ts and inclusivity for LGBTQ+ employees, in 2023 gave a perfect score to 545 companies headquartered in the 50 states — compared with just 15 companies in 2002.
Withum
Withum promoted Colleen Fay to Practice Leader of the Financial Services Team. She is responsible for leading the Fir m’s overall growth strategy and client experience for the Practice. Colleen has over 20 years of public accounting experience, focusing on the alter native investment industry with expertise in tax compliance and consulting for hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital funds, funds of funds, general partners and management companies.
Chelsea Lighting, a value-add lighting and lighting technology distributor with deep project management expertise, welcomes Sean Lafferty as Chief Executive Of cer. A seasoned industry veteran with three decades of global experience, Lafferty will lead an experienced and knowledgeable team with a focus on driving expansion in new and existing verticals. Prior to joining Chelsea, he was President and CEO of Steinel America.
To place your listing, visit www.crainsnewyork.com/people-on-the-move or, for more information, contact Debora Stein at 917.226.5470 / dstein@crain.com
Scott Weisberg has joined PML LLC’s leadership team as EVP and Chief Operating Of cer (COO). Weisberg joins PML with more than 20 years of industry experience. He began his career with PCL Construction before joining Lendlease in 2006, where he worked as SVP and Operations Director. Currently, the rm is consulting on projects including the New Terminal One at John F. Kennedy International Airport, the Port Authority Midtown Bus Terminal, and the Flatiron Building reconstruction.
Mutual of America Financial Group
Brian Q. Severin has been appointed President and Chief Operating Of cer of Mutual of America Financial Group, a leading provider of retirement services and investments to organizations and individuals. He will oversee the Company’s daily operations and continue to lead the execution of its long-term strategic plan initiatives. Severin brings over 25 years of experience in the nancial services industry, including extensive expertise in de ned contribution retirement plan sales and marketing.
LAW
Belkin Burden Goldman, LLP
Littler
Kelly Cardin joined the New York of ce of Littler, the world’s largest employment and labor law practice representing management, as Shareholder. She represents employers in a range of disputes, handling cases involving complex and cutting-edge employment law issues, while also litigating against claims of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation. In addition to her litigation practice, Kelly advises on pay transparency laws and conducts pay equity analyses and workplace investigations.
Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf, LLP
Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf, LLP
Benesch
Belkin Burden Goldman LLP, a real estate law rm based in NYC, is proud to welcome attorneys Jose Saladin and Michael A. Mulia to its Litigation and Transactional Departments. Mr. Saladin brings 18 years of experience in landlord-tenant disputes, contract disputes, corporate governance, and cooperative and condominium representation. Mr. Mulia specializes in commercial real estate transactions and leasing, handling transactions nationwide. Their addition is poised to increase the depth of BBG’s already experienced legal team.
Norris McLaughlin, P. A.
Andrea Lawrence represents developers, owners, general contractors and other clients in all areas of real estate and construction. For more than a decade, she was the Deputy CEO and GC of an international RE investment and development company, where she advised on RE and construction matters for its residential and commercial real estate portfolio. She has a JD from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a BA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is admitted in NY, NJ, EDNY, SDNY.
Joshua Oberman represents contractors, developers and high net-worth homeowners in private and public construction matters, including Access Agreements under NY Real Property Law 881.His practice includes commercial disputes, litigation with sureties, union negotiations and con icts, and insolvency. He also assists with asset preservation strategies in a T&E context. He has a JD from Emory School of Law, a BA from Dartmouth College, and is admitted in NY.
Loren Scolaro has joined Benesch as a Managing Associate in the rm’s Litigation Practice Group. She has extensive experience in bankruptcy law and has worked on Chapter 7, Chapter 11, and Chapter 13 bankruptcy cases, including adversary proceedings. She has represented debtors, creditors, and other parties in bankruptcy matters including Chapter 11 restructurings, distressed asset sales, claims administration, and asset recovery.
Colette DeRiso has joined Benesch as an Associate in the Real Estate Practice Group. She has experience representing nancial lending institutions, corporations, and real estate developers in various secured and unsecured nancing transactions across a wide range of industries.
Peter J. Connors, a Chambers-ranked tax attorney, has joined the law rm of Norris McLaughlin, P.A. as a member. Peter focuses his practice on cross-border transactions and tax controversy matters and has provided legal counsel and tax strategies for multinational clients. He has developed an innovative niche practice focused on the intersection of renewable energy and tax law, particularly involving carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and hydrogen as an alternative energy source.
West Monroe
Gil Mermelstein has been named President of West Monroe. He oversees all client-facing parts of the business, including consulting lines, client success, market growth functions, strategy, revenue, commercial growth, and marketing. Under his leadership, he ensures West Monroe’s client needs are addressed. Previously, he served as West Monroe’s COO, transforming the rm’s operating model and preparing the rm for continuing future growth. He is a member of the rm’s Board of Directors.
Adam Gordon has teamed up with longtime friend Robert De Niro to open Wild ower Studios in a Queens neighborhood
Real estate has been on Adam Gordon’s mind at least since graduate school, when he did extremely well in a class focused on the industry. One of his rst jobs after getting his MBA was in real estate investment banking at the now collapsed Bear Stearns, although he soon found he did not enjoy the place very much, to put it mildly.
“I realized very quickly that I
By | Eddie Small
and the Amazon-leased Brooklyn Logistics Center in East New York.
But his initial developments took place far outside the city, as he focused on mixed-use renovations in Wicker Park, Chicago, and outlet stores for luxury fashion brands in Manchester, Vermont.
“Will marginal studios ourish? That I don’t know, but I’m quite certain that the best studios—us, Steiner—will do well for many, many years.”
didn’t want a miserable life with miserable people providing advice no one needed or wanted, that no one seemed to have any conviction for,” he said. “I went o on my own and became a real estate developer.”
Gordon today works on some of the highest-pro le industrial real estate projects in the city as managing partner at Chelsea-based Wildower Ltd. ese include a lm and TV production studio in Astoria backed by actor Robert De Niro
He stayed in New York while working on those deals and switched to more of a residential focus after renovating his own loft in SoHo and selling it for a healthy pro t. But he soon found himself more interested in the generally less glamorous world of industrial real estate given the city's ever-increasing demand for storage space.
“I saw urban self-storage begin to rise as an asset class, and the institutions didn't understand it because it was in lower-income, often nonwhite neighborhoods, which at that time could not attract institutional capital,” he said. “I felt I was very early in the business.”
His partnership with De Niro on Wild ower Studios stemmed from a friendship that started more than 20 years ago, when one of Gordon's sons happened to play
the drums next to one of De Niro’s sons at the Upper East Side's Diller-Quaile School of Music. ey have been working together on their studio project for years, and it is now on track to open later this summer on 19th Avenue by the Astoria waterfront.
e city has seen a major boom in studio projects lately, and several more are on their way. But Gordon is not concerned about Wild ower su ering due to a glut of studios oversaturating the city.
He described most studios as fairly depressing places with “awful food served on steam tables” and said he’s con dent that the quality of Wild ower would make it stand out from the pack. He compared it to luxury residential buildings like 150 Charles St. and 15 Central Park West, noting that the best properties in the city across asset classes tend to do well.
“ ere is no place that a lmmaker, a producer, an editor, a union driver would rather be than the environment that we’re creating for them at Wild ower Studios,” he said. “Will marginal studios ourish? at I don’t know, but I’m quite certain that the best studios—us, Steiner—will do well for many, many years.”
JOB TITLE Managing partner at Wild ower Ltd.
AGE 63
GREW UP Shaker Heights and Dayton, Ohio
RESIDES West Chelsea, Manhattan
EDUCATION Bachelor’s in international relations, University of Michigan; MBA, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
FAMILY Gordon has two grown sons and is married to Kristina O’Neal, a founding partner at the global hospitality design rm AvroKO.
GEARHEAD Gordon has loved cars since he learned how to drive. His favorite classic models are early versions of the Porsche 911 and old school four-by-fours.
WHERE’S THE BEEF?
Gordon has a working cattle ranch in Sonoma County, California, where he raises Wagyu beef for chefs who work in local restaurants just a bicycle ride away.
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