Responsible 100 Awards honors New Yorkers dedicated to corporate social responsibility

On Sept. 11, 2001, Maria Torres-Springer, now the first deputy mayor of New York City, was covered in dust and debris as she joined the thousands of people traversing the Brooklyn Bridge to reach home in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

It was in this moment that Torres-Springer, who had only moved to New York a week prior, first felt connected to the city and its residents.

This backstory, shared at the Responsible 100 Awards, is what the deputy mayor said sparked her life of public service, of helping New Yorkers, in part through corporate social responsibility. This is a business practice that stems from the belief that businesses, nonprofits and government have a responsibility to support their communities through philanthropy, donations and volunteerism.

“We were all banded together at the time in this really desperate attempt to get to safety,” she said of her 9/11 experience. “But from then on, we were also bound through the work of rebuilding our city, and that was the day that I personally decided to devote the rest of my life in service of New Yorkers.”

The Responsible 100 ceremony, coinciding with the 2024 Responsible 100 Power List, was held on Thursday at Sony Hall, organized by City & State and sponsored by 26 companies, including LiveonNY, KPMG, the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters and SL Green Realty Corp.

“The people in organizations that we’re honoring here today understand better than most the importance of corporate responsibility,” NY1 news anchor Cheryl Wills, who emceed the event, said. “That’s why we’re super excited to be able to celebrate you in this room who are making strides in this movement and in your respective organizations.” 

The ceremony honored 100 socially responsible leaders, including all of the keynote speakers, like Torres-Springer. 

“I’ve always believed that public service, ultimately, is an act of love,” she said. “And when we do our best work, that love is actually unconditional. We don’t ask, ‘What’s in it for us?’ We don’t ask, ‘What does this mean for our brand or for our career prospects moving forward?’ We serve because we know no other way.”

Another keynote speech came from City Council Member Yusef Salaam of Harlem, as he comes to the end of his first full year in office.

As an exonerated member of the Central Park Five, Salaam discussed redemption and the “transformative power of community,” saying that his community never abandoned him and is the reason he is a public servant today. 

“Service to me is the highest form of gratitude,” he said. “Social responsibility is not just a buzz word; it’s a call to action. It’s about recognizing that we are stewards of the communities we inhabit, and understanding that our actions, no matter how small, can create ripples of change.”

The third keynote address came from reality television star and philanthropist Dolores Catania from “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” who works with Maimonides Medical Center to promote breast cancer awareness and mammograms. She said her drive to help people is “inherit.”

“In the service work I’ve done over the years, I’ve learned that transformative change comes in all shapes and sizes,” she said. “Sure, it’s in the big things like charity events, financial donations and volunteer work, but it’s also in the smaller things like delivering coats to the local shelters so someone’s always warm or being on the other side of a phone call for a friend. There’s no limit to things that you could do for others and there’s no minimum either.”