Above & Beyond
Above & Beyond: Social Services
Recognizing exemplary leaders dedicated to serving vulnerable New Yorkers.
City & State presents 2024 Above & Beyond: Social Services Leo Sorel Photography; Ian Johnston; Rochelle Heinrichs
To consider City & State’s inaugural Above & Beyond: Social Services list is to gain new appreciation for the breadth of talent and dedication powering New York's human-centered agencies.
The altruistic backbone of the sector is a front line of social workers and counselors nimbly responding to the twin exigencies of America's mental health crisis and New York's influx of high-needs asylum-seekers. But these practitioners could not do their work without the support of management consultants; attorneys who specialize in the nonprofit space; fundraisers, insurers and financing experts to secure ever-more-costly initiatives; and the lobbyists and advocates who ensure that Albany and Washington invest in our most vulnerable communities.
Housing is a secondary theme of this list, reflecting the skyrocketing need for emergency shelter, transitional housing and supportive residences for people struggling with the fallout of homelessness, substance use, chronic illness and other complex needs.
As this list illustrates, New York's social services community rallies to meet these evolving needs – and does so with professionalism, patience and indomitable optimism. This list – written by journalist Hilary Danailova – celebrates the people who make our communities healthier and happier, one New Yorker at a time.
Ron Abad
Fresh out of Boston College Law School and fired up to tackle society’s big problems, Ron Abad headed home to the Bronx. He took a job with a local nonprofit, driven by a desire to combat the poverty he saw growing up Black and Puerto Rican in an under-resourced community.
Thirty years later, “I still feel as passionate today, as energized, as when I was a kid,” says Abad, now the CEO of Bronx-based Community Housing Innovations. What’s changed, he says, is the scale of need for his nonprofit’s services – everything from homeless shelters to supportive and affordable housing and first-time homebuyer assistance.
Besides the increasingly lopsided ratio of homes to people, Abad cites as recent challenges the COVID-19 pandemic and an influx of asylum-seekers. Since joining CHI in 2021, he has grown the organization fourfold – to a $125 million budget and 600 employees – to meet skyrocketing needs, even those of upper-middle-class New Yorkers. Only the organization’s second-ever leader, Abad expanded CHI's geographical reach from Westchester County to New York City and the Hudson Valley.
It was, after all, familiar territory: Abad previously oversaw emergency family housing as an assistant commissioner with the New York City Department of Homeless Services. He most recently served as senior vice president for Acacia Network Housing, one of the city’s largest homeless providers.
Abad is now the grandfather of five, “which adds to my passion and commitment, and my perspective,” he says. “I’m just proud that I have stayed grounded these 30 years.”
Nadine Akinyemi
Twenty-five years ago, when Bridging Access to Care was still called the Brooklyn AIDS Task Force, Nadine Akinyemi quickly realized that the prevailing medical model was frequently ineffective. Experts issued often complicated instructions to patients who, already facing myriad challenges, were often unable to comply. “You have to work with people,” says Akinyemi, now the organization’s CEO. “Validate where they are, understand how they see the world and interact with their environment.”
That approach turned out to function better not just for AIDS patients, but also for the range of services that BAC now offers – including mental health and substance abuse treatment, prevention education, and housing and social support programs.
Akinyemi joined the organization after a series of patient support and administrative jobs at Columbia-Presbyterian and SUNY Downstate hospitals. During her 12-year tenure as CEO, she has nearly doubled BAC’s budget to $18 million, added youth services and opened a Williamsburg facility to increase capacity (the organization currently serves 3,000-plus mostly Brooklyn-based clients). She also responded to increased demand for behavioral health services, implementing a trauma-informed model.
A few years ago, Akinyemi heard from a former client who had come to BAC in great distress, struggling with substance-use disorder and frayed family ties. After getting clean, he was able to find a stable job and reconnected with his loved ones. “That’s what drives me,” Akinyemi says, “when people come up to me and say, ‘Thank you for helping me get here.’”
Greg Bangser
As a child in Hartford, where his father ran a community foundation, Greg Bangser was moved to address social inequities.
“I saw the ridiculous difference in opportunity that people have depending on where they’re born, what they look like and who their parents are,” Bangser says. “I had a lot of opportunities myself. And I wanted to even that out in the way that I could."
For nearly 20 years, Bangser has worked to do just that at the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corp., or NMIC, a settlement house whose 15,000 clients mostly come from Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. He joined as a paralegal and, after overseeing a $28 million budget as chief operating officer, is poised to become the organization's chief strategy and innovation officer.
As deputy executive director, Bangser helped expand the organization’s reach through partnerships, including with New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services and NewYork-Presbyterian. He also managed a pandemic-era online transition that, through digital outreach, extended services to previously isolated populations. “We were able to turn a crisis into an opportunity,” says Bangser, who holds an MPA from Princeton.
It could be a metaphor for his work at NMIC, which – through housing, immigration, youth, nutrition and career services – moves clients from struggle to self-sufficiency. The father of four foster daughters, Bangser knows from personal experience how much outcomes matter. “We have to make sure that we don’t just feel good about what we’re doing,” he says, “but that we’re actually achieving something.”
Raye Barbieri
As CEO of the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, Raye Barbieri draws inspiration from her honeybees.
“Bees work together as a team,” says Barbieri, whose hives both at home and at work provide honey for Bronx neighbors. “They are the epitome of community effort, which is what I aspire to.”
In that spirit, Barbieri oversees a $15 million organization that serves 6,500 families annually throughout the Bronx and Upper Manhattan. With a background in criminal justice reform, she is especially proud of championing the borough’s only free bilingual program for violence victims.
Previously, as a deputy commissioner for the New York City Administration for Children’s Services Youth and Family Justice Division, Barbieri oversaw a wholesale redesign of the juvenile justice system that emphasized therapeutic group homes and community support.
“It was a hugely successful effort to deinstitutionalize kids who were often getting arrested for poverty-related things,” says Barbieri, a Columbia-trained social worker. In a similar vein, she helped establish community courts with the Center for Justice Innovation, where she headed youth and community crime prevention.
Barbieri inherited her social-justice ethos as part of “a long line” of Connecticut public servants. It’s a perfect fit for the Kingsbridge Heights center, which, as she observes, is located in a historic settlement house – “both a landing pad, and a launching pad for a better life and more opportunity,” she says. “I believe at the core of everything is preserving and uplifting human dignity and human rights, and creating equitable access to resources.”
Reïna Batrony
At The New York Foundling, a 150-year-old social services institution, Reïna Batrony reaches out to clients in four different languages: English, Spanish, French and Haitian Creole.
Talking to fellow immigrants in their native tongues “helps me engage at a different level,” says Batrony, who oversees community-based and education programs throughout the five boroughs for the $226 million organization. Born and raised in Haiti, she moved to Florida after high school and went to college in the Dominican Republic before landing in New York for graduate school.
Batrony joined The New York Foundling in 2010 as a bilingual therapist for at-risk children in the Bronx. Later, she spearheaded a mobile-response team for school mental health emergencies; the program has since grown to 22 schools, de-escalating potentially fraught situations and reducing costs to families and the health system.
Currently, Batrony manages nine community-based programs in New York City’s child welfare system, working closely with New York's departments of health and education. With each new program she implements, Batrony draws on a commitment to community service that she says she has had since childhood.
“I’ve always believed in giving everyone an opportunity,” Batrony says, adding that she chose to make her career at The New York Foundling “because of the mission and the vision, and the communities we serve. Since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted to elevate the voices of those who cannot find their own voices” – and she does it in four languages.
Jeffrey Brenner
At some point during his transition from family physician to systems innovator, Dr. Jeffrey Brenner realized that social workers could benefit from the same kind of residency programs available to doctors. As a result, the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services – the $220 million organization Brenner joined in 2021 – recently launched a first-in-the-nation residency for new MSW grads.
It’s another example of the cross-disciplinary thinking he brings to The Jewish Board, which serves 45,000 people annually through myriad programs – including outpatient mental health for 5,000 New Yorkers every week. Brenner’s crusade to import health care best practices to social services was born of a realization from his clinician years: The problems he treated almost always stemmed from underlying issues.
“Great behavioral-health treatment, housing and foster care do more to ensure long-term health than anything I did in my primary-care office,” says Brenner, who spent 20 years with the New Jersey-based Cooper Health System. Exhibit A was the Cooper addiction program he spearheaded, which, he says, "had a bigger impact than any care I’d delivered.”
Brenner also led the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, pioneering data analysis and grassroots outreach to tackle the social determinants of problems like diabetes. He next brought this approach to UnitedHealth – America’s largest managed-Medicaid insurer – working on the national expansion of housing for high-needs patients.
In terms of evidence-based modeling, “the health care world is 20 years ahead of social services,” Brenner says. “My goal is to improve these systems to deliver amazing, life-changing care to everyone, every day.”
Richard Brown
Richard Brown isn’t a social worker, but he plays a critical role in transforming the lives of New York’s most vulnerable populations. Currently director of housing development for IMPACCT Brooklyn, Brown specializes in financing housing and infrastructure for low-income seniors and people with chronic physical or mental illnesses or substance use.
For Brown, housing is more than just shelter; it’s an essential determinant of health and well-being. “There’s been a lot of movement on the relationship between health and housing – that if you secure housing, you can reduce health care costs,” he says, explaining that patients with stable living situations have better outcomes.
It’s a cause Brown has championed for years. Earlier in his career, during a stint in the public sector, Brown worked on a $100 million Medicaid project designing housing that could help reduce health costs. After earning a master’s degree in public administration with a finance emphasis from New York University, Brown worked for New York City’s housing department and the state’s housing finance and mortgage agencies.
“I was always interested in urban environments,” says Brown, who wrote his University of Pennsylvania senior thesis on the school’s struggling West Philadelphia neighborhood.
Since his start as a Brooklyn community organizer, he has financed more than $1 billion of housing. That includes, most recently, a $38 million Section 8 project for homeless seniors.
“Having a quality place to live affects so many aspects of life – and has a real impact on communities,” Brown says. “I’m happy to play a role in that.”
Jacqueline Collazo
Jacqueline Collazo feels grateful to be part of what she calls “a sisterhood of incredibly strong women” at Volunteers of America-Greater New York, where she oversees its domestic violence services. “I’m floored by the knowledge of these women,” Collazo says, “and how empowered they are to serve communities across New York City.”
Her team houses nearly 500 people escaping violence – a fifth of whom are children – in seven shelters across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Thanks to a program she spearheaded, there’s also an increasing number of service dogs, who provide comfort to the displaced.
Since joining VOA in 2021, Collazo has also worked with neurologists to advance understanding of the physical trauma of domestic violence, including traumatic brain injuries. Her tenure has also seen growth in the organization’s volunteer corps and an introduction of creative arts and EMDR to treat trauma.
Originally from the Bronx, Collazo is the daughter and niece of social workers. She began her career in victim services as a Bronx rape crisis coordinator, “which was eye-opening for me – as a Bronx native – seeing how many cases of sexual assault there were, including human trafficking,” she says.
It’s tough work emotionally, but Collazo has numerous strategies to decompress: cooking, meditation, yoga and salsa dancing. In addition to self-care, her practices are a model for the traumatized people she serves each day. “My goal doing one-to-one services,” she says, “is to focus on helping traumatized individuals – not to survive life, but to live it.”
Robert Cordero
Ask Robert Cordero what launched his trajectory to the pinnacle of New York’s social services sector, and instead of mentioning his elite schooling, he cites Head Start.
“By the time I got to kindergarten, I was reading,” says Cordero, now CEO of Grand St. Settlement. As the child of Puerto Rico-born parents in Chicago, he adds, programs like Head Start, the Boys and Girls Club and YMCA “made it possible for me to get into a selective high school, a renowned university – things I didn’t ever think would be achievable. That’s the crux of my commitment.”
Cordero is now expanding Grand Street’s Head Start program to 600 families in Brooklyn and the Bronx, thanks to an $18 million federal grant. In less than a decade, Cordero has quadrupled the organization’s budget to $63 million, enabling the renovation of its Lower East Side community center and the expansion of services for 18,000 low-income New York families.
Cordero’s own youth advocacy began with a teaching job in Chicago’s public schools. “Committed educators have the potential to be really effective nonprofit leaders,” he says. “You’re a solid communicator, and it really ties you to the community.”
Frustrated by the yawning need he saw among students’ families, Cordero transitioned into social services. He most recently headed Boom!Health in the Bronx, an experience that guides his “respectful” expansion of Grand Street into New York’s northernmost borough.
“As a community-based settlement house, we go to where we’re needed,” Cordero says, “helping lift up families and strengthen communities.”
Jessica Cortes-Lugo
At The Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, Social Services Director Jessica Cortes-Lugo builds the community she wished she’d had when she, like her clients, found herself in transition.
“We have families from all over – not just Venezuela and Central America, but Ukraine, Africa, Haiti,” Cortes-Lugo says of the 400-plus clients in CHCF’s family shelters. “It’s a whole community of families with children.”
After helping to create the organization’s family shelter program, she built a 10-person team to coordinate comprehensive programming for her clients – everything from trauma counseling to music therapy.
Cortes-Lugo is guided by both a family tradition of community service and the memory of her own rocky arrival in the continental U.S. from Puerto Rico. She was in high school, and her parents had recently split up. “I needed a support system I didn’t have,” she says. “I didn’t want someone else to go through that.”
The staggering scale of New York’s social services needs has propelled Cortes-Lugo toward policy, the focus of her MSW at Stony Brook University. As a member of the national ethics committee for the National Association of Social Workers, she weighs in on key policy matters. In 2022, shortly before having her daughter, she graduated from Leaders of Color, a grassroots training program for community leaders.
“When laws are passed, they affect people and families,” she says. “But whoever is making the law generally hasn’t experienced or isn’t impacted by it.” As an advocate, Cortes-Lugo is out to change that.
Aldervan Daly
Aldervan Daly grew up doing theater, and he still knows how to hold a crowd. He now wields his powers of engagement at HousingPlus, the homeless services organization where he oversees communications and development.
The Mobile, Alabama native earned a master’s in arts administration and eventually segued into social service nonprofits. Settled into New York City, he has earned a reputation as an ace fundraiser, able to effectively engage city agencies and other partners – and enabling HousingPlus’ doubling of its household shelter capacity over the next few years.
At Rising Ground, where he was the executive vice president for institutional advancement, Daly increased individual giving by 15% for the $200 million organization. HousingPlus, with a budget just one-tenth that amount, appealed to Daly with its smaller, more grassroots footprint – eight Brooklyn locations that house and provide services for 220 families.
Adopting a foster child also involved Daly more intimately with the sector. “It’s helped my work tremendously,” he says. “Now I know what it’s like being interviewed by a caseworker, someone who held the key to my future.”
And he hasn't entirely given up the theater. Every few years, Daly updates his cabaret act and performs it at Don’t Tell Mama’s. The skills he uses in both his profession and his hobby are complementary: “My job involves standing in front of people, being appealing and being able to tell stories,” he says. “I’m selling me – and selling the organization. There’s an honesty about it.”
Sherly Demosthenes-Atkinson
Growing up in Brooklyn, Sherly Demosthenes-Atkinson watched her godfather, a surgeon, go beyond the scope of his specialty in caring for his patients’ nutrition and other needs.
That dedication now informs Demosthenes-Atkinson’s expansive vision for CABS Health Network, which she has steered for the past decade as executive director and, since 2017, CEO. “I saw the joy and the humility that my godfather exhibited in serving others in need,” she says. “It stuck with me, and it propelled me to do the same.”
With a budget that is now $50 million, Demosthenes-Atkinson has transitioned CABS’ purview from a single-service home-care model to a comprehensive network of essential services for 1,200 elderly and disabled clients throughout the five boroughs. Most recently, she has focused on partnerships that address the social and behavioral determinants of health, collaborating with New York City’s housing and health departments, and with a Medicaid asthma-intervention program that expands CABS into pediatric services.
“Care management goes beyond home care to the coordination of specialists, and keeping individuals within that continuum of care,” Demosthenes-Atkinson explains.
Her approach is now part of the health administration curriculum at Hofstra University, Demosthenes-Atkinson’s alma mater, where students participate in CABS seminars. But she is quick to point out that her accomplishments only build on a commitment established decades ago by pioneers like Rep. Shirley Chisholm, who spoke at CABS’ groundbreaking. “I’m proud to have stood on their shoulders,” Demosthenes-Atkinson says. “The CABS mission is embedded in my spirit.”
Christine Deska
After 15 years working in government, foundations and nonprofits, Christine Deska knew the management challenges facing her nonprofit colleagues – and decided to do something about them. She founded Nonprofit Sector Strategies, a public benefit corporation that offers strategic consulting, and launched its signature product – BellesBoard, a digital platform for nonprofit management.
“We know that small-to-medium-sized nonprofits are mission-driven organizations and need to watch every penny,” Deska says. “We also know all the time spent keeping your board engaged, preparing for meetings and fundraising. So we built a platform to help you do that.”
Based in New York, NSS is also one of five founding member organizations of the Nonprofit Resource Hub, a 400-member trade association for which Deska serves as board president. She draws on a decade of experience at AARP’s New York office, where she created a member engagement model, and with the Columbus Citizens Foundation, where she boosted program funding by 50%.
Deska studied communications at Manhattan College and learned engagement in her first job, knocking on doors for a Bronx-based Assembly member. Since then, she has added an MBA to her résumé and seen BellesBoard become a preferred vendor for Girls Scouts USA. The platform was also recently selected for Blackbaud’s Social Good Startup program, a tech accelerator.
“When I left my desk job at a foundation, I wanted to be able to work with a lot of different organizations,” Deska says. Mission accomplished: “I really feel lucky.”
Rehana Farrell
Early in her finance career, Rehana Farrell told a mentor that she aspired to run a nonprofit in her 40s. “And then I was like, wait, I’m in my 40s,” says Farrell, recalling the moment nine years ago when she was offered the leadership post at Youth INC.
It was serendipitous in more ways than one: Farrell’s most recent assignment had been creating an independent spin-off from Guggenheim Partners. That kind of self-sufficient infrastructure was exactly what Youth INC’s founders were seeking at the 20-year mark for the nonprofit coalition supporting New York City young people. “I had literally just done that,” Farrell says. “It was the right place at the right time.”
Drawing on her experience at firms like Merrill Lynch and Smith Barney, Farrell has since raised $70 million for Youth INC, whose organizations collectively serve hundreds of thousands of clients annually. Under her leadership, the coalition has doubled the number of both partners and programs. Farrell is especially proud of securing $750 million to create Youth INC’s Rise Academy for Leaders of Color in 2021.
An upstate New York native, Farrell studied economics at Smith College and earned her MBA from Columbia. “But I was always attracted to mission-driven organizations,” she says. “In a dream world, our long-term vision would be a symbiotic relationship, where mutually beneficial partnerships would create community around helping young people.”
With Farrell at the helm, that vision is looking less like a dream – and more like reality.
Peter B. Gudaitis
Sure, disaster relief can be stressful. But for Peter B. Gudaitis, providing human services in moments of crisis is also dynamic and rewarding – and consistent with his role as an Episcopal priest.
“There are always new humanitarian crises. It’s not the kind of job where you’re doing the same thing for 20 years,” says Gudaitis, the longtime leader of New York Disaster Interfaith Services. “You’re always looking for ways to improve services and speed up the recovery process.”
Gudaitis founded the organization two decades ago after a stint with the Episcopal Charities of the Diocese of New York. “I was always interested in the social side of ministry,” he says. Starting with $400,000, Gudaitis has expanded his budget tenfold alongside $130 million in city contracts. He now employs 50 full-time staffers and counts 60 faith-based organizations in his federation.
Together, the coalition partners manage long-term recovery programs for 9/11 first responders and people affected by Superstorm Sandy. They have coordinated responses to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and earthquakes in Haiti, including evacuee resettlement. Having taken over management of New York’s Emergency Shelter Network, the organization also assists asylum-seekers. Gudaitis’ team also offers preparedness training, a 300-strong volunteer disaster chaplain team and a citywide communication platform for New York religious leaders.
Disasters come and go, but Gudaitis’ motivation remains constant. “You have this opportunity to walk alongside families, often for years, through crisis,” he says, “and to try to help those families achieve recovery.”
Christopher Hanway
Every day, Christopher Hanway literally walks in the steps of Jacob Riis, a founder of the modern American social-service movement.
“It’s a big legacy to live up to,” says Hanway, who heads the historic Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement in Long Island City. “I’m honored to keep that legacy going strong.”
In the 15 years since he arrived to lead development and communications, Hanway has become both a convert and an evangelist for the model. “Settlement houses are so adaptable; we’re fast on our feet,” says Hanway, referencing his organization’s rapid responses to COVID-19 and Superstorm Sandy. Most recently, his team has expanded Riis’ capacity from 7,000 to 9,000 clients, absorbing a wave of migrants from Latin America and elsewhere.
A lifelong New Yorker, Hanway stumbled into nonprofits after learning fundraising in a post-college hospital job. His expertise has proven transformative for Riis, where Hanway has more than doubled the budget to $8 million over a decade.
Even so, the surging demand has forced his team “to be creative in expanding our dollars,” he says. “And to think outside of the box, to change the course for thousands of individuals who literally have come knocking on our doors for help.”
It’s a challenge similar to the one Riis himself faced a century ago, during a similar immigration wave. “That ethos – helping new arrivals acclimate – is a through line,” Hanway says. “We are still doing a lot of the same work.”
Orlando Ivey
Winter or summer, weekend afternoons often find Orlando Ivey sailing around New York Harbor: “There’s nothing better than being on the water in New York City,” he says.
Most of the time, however, Ivey is dedicated to that most firma of terra – housing. As CEO of the Children’s Rescue Fund, he oversees a nonprofit that allocates nearly $200 million annually to housing for vulnerable New Yorkers.
Ivey grew up in a New York City family devoted to public service – “the understanding that there is a need for people dedicated to serving the underserved,” as he describes it. He took that creed to heart, beginning his career with the American Red Cross before joining the fund in 2004. At the helm since 2018, Ivey has overseen the shift from a primary focus on housing to providing a more comprehensive array of services – including mental and behavioral health and job training – along with upgraded facilities better suited to the new offerings.
He also quintupled the organization’s programs from three to 15, most recently in response to a surge in demand from asylum-seeking migrants. It’s one of myriad demographic shifts Ivey has observed over the decades, as a clientele of mostly women with children has diversified to include more singles and men. “Everyone is someone’s child; let’s start there,” Ivey says.
And all of them, he emphasizes, deserve keys to their own homes. “That feeling of knowing you’ve helped someone overcome the burden of not being housed,” he says, “it really is fulfilling.”
Talanda Jackson-Franklin
It’s no coincidence that Talanda Jackson-Franklin grew up to become vice president of social services at the Acacia Network – and a specialist in both behavior support and alcohol and substance use counseling.
As a child growing up in Brooklyn, Jackson-Franklin witnessed the heroin and crack epidemics firsthand. One of the victims was her own father, an early AIDS victim. But Jackson-Franklin also grew up in a family of health and social service workers, “and witnessing how they helped people and effected change, I felt inspired to pursue a similar path,” she says. “Observing homelessness, poverty and limited resources stoked my drive to make a difference.”
At Acacia, Jackson-Franklin oversees supportive housing in four city boroughs, along with a portfolio of nearly three dozen residential treatment and community programs. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, she has opened four new supportive housing programs that serve 200-plus formerly homeless New Yorkers.
With a master’s in business administration from Long Island University, Jackson-Franklin has also brought a manager’s eye for efficiency: She recently merged three Acacia departments collectively responsible for 800 housing units into what she calls “one dynamic division that works as a cohesive team.”
For Jackson-Franklin, people keep her motivated – whether it’s the formerly homeless families she moves into their own new homes, or the program directors and social workers she mentors. “I enjoy learning, teaching, interacting with people from diverse backgrounds,” she says, “and providing the help and resources that can effect change.”
Yolanda Kanes
Whether handling estates or advising nonprofit social-service organizations, attorney Yolanda Kanes brings a passionate focus on women’s advancement to everything she does.
Kanes is a partner at Tannenbaum Helpern in Manhattan, where she chairs the firm’s trusts and estates practice. It was through this line of work that she became deeply involved with New York nonprofits – many of which, Kanes points out, are financed by the bequests of wealthy people.
“I wanted to practice in a way that was helpful,” says Kanes, who transitioned from commercial litigation into what she calls “a more personal” realm, “focused on the humanity of legal practice.”
A large part of that is championing women – both her colleagues and at the social and human services organizations she represents, many of which are women-founded. Among Kanes’ most long-standing clients is an ovarian cancer advocacy group. She also represents a variety of children’s programs and charter schools – sectors that, she points out, disproportionately impact women.
The daughter of Greek immigrants, Kanes grew up with a sense of responsibility to her family’s adopted community. Her social consciousness was further honed as a young lawyer in the 1980s, when “being a woman was still a challenge” in a male-dominated field.
In response, Kane founded her firm’s Women’s Initiative. She is also a sought-after speaker on diversity, equity and inclusion, and women and the law, and regularly appears before nonprofit audiences. “I love the fact that I’m giving back,” Kanes says, “and I love to mentor younger people.”
Andrea Kantor
Growing up on Long Island, Andrea Kantor thought she’d be a writer or a lawyer. “Neither of those things happened,” says the managing director and not-for-profit banking relationship manager at Webster Bank. “But I have learned a lot of law in being a banker." And between loan proposals and credit memos, she says, “I write a lot.”
An impulsive summer internship on Wall Street led Kantor into a finance career – and a lifelong bent toward volunteerism inclined Kantor toward her specialty in nonprofits.
At Webster, working mostly with organizations with budgets of $10 million to $100 million, Kantor facilitates loans for capacity-building – like financing a $30 million Long Island private-school expansion. She got into the sector at JPMorganChase, leading the Northeast region not-for-profit team, then headed health care, education and not-for-profits at Israel Discount Bank.
But as far back as the 1990s, Kantor launched an employee volunteerism initiative at the First National Bank of Chicago’s New York office. Philanthropy “is a highlight of our culture here” at Webster Bank, says Kantor, who co-chairs Webster Pride, the bank’s LGBTQ+ business resource group, and serves as a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Council delegate. Kantor has also been a fixture on boards for Jewish, arts and health causes.
“The common theme is social justice and equity – and making sure that people get opportunities to thrive,” she says. “Every day is a good day working with nonprofits who are doing amazing work in the community. And I get to be a part of it.”
Warren Kent
Warren Kent’s mother worked with special-needs adults, and his sister is a school psychologist. Growing up in Mount Vernon, Kent realized that he, too, shared the family inclination toward social services.
“My sister knew I had a heart for people and put me in that direction,” says Kent, who joined The Children’s Village in 1996.
Today, Kent shares that heart with youths across New York City. As senior vice president for community-based services with the Bronx-based organization, he coordinates job preparation, immigration assistance and other services for up to 10,000 disadvantaged young people annually.
For the past decade, he has also served as executive director of the Bridge Builders Community Partnership, a grassroots organization that works with the city’s Administration for Children’s Services on programs and referrals. Most recently, he has steered Bridge Builders’ collaboration with ACS on the Family Enrichment Center, a primary-prevention pilot program addressing social issues at their roots.
At one point, Kent briefly left Children’s Village to launch an after-care program for Westchester County. “We did so well, we put ourselves out of work,” he jokes. The Hunter College MSW has also been active in the Undoing Racism movement, and was the first person honored with the Champion of Justice Award by the National Association of Social Workers’ Westchester division.
“I love seeing something considered to be broken turn around,” Kent says. “It gives you a joy and immense pleasure – and helps you understand why you do this work.”
Cheryl Kraus
Family trials shaped Cheryl Kraus’ determination to improve the health system. Now, as director of government affairs and policy for the Hospice & Palliative Care Association of New York State, she is ensuring that other families will have more positive experiences.
Since building the association’s advocacy from scratch, Kraus has gotten four bills passed with bipartisan support within two years – most notably, creating a first-in-the-nation Office of Hospice and Palliative Care at the state Department of Health. “This is going to position New York as a leader in serious illness and end-of-life care,” Kraus says.
That means more families will have access to the hospice care that meant so much to Kraus during the COVID-19 pandemic, when she nursed a beloved uncle through his final weeks. And it means fewer families will, hopefully, suffer the indignities that Kraus watched her own disabled and poverty-stricken parents face.
“I grew up around seriously ill individuals who needed support, and for whom the system failed,” Kraus says. Determined to succeed, she became the first in her family to graduate first from high school, as well as from college and law school.
She was working as a litigator when, inspired by her uncle’s experience, she convinced the hospice association – a client – to create her current position. Kraus credits that chutzpah to the resilience she developed as a child of disadvantage. “Those skills are now my greatest strengths,” she says. “Identifying opportunities, thinking out of the box – and realizing there’s more than one way to get things done.”
Joshua Lamberg
For Joshua Lamberg, insurance isn’t just a business – it’s a social commitment. Lamberg is the founder of New York-based Lamb Insurance Services, which in under two decades has grown into the nation’s largest agency devoted to insuring nonprofit social-service agencies.
“There is more value in being the best at one thing,” Lamberg says. “And in a litigious society, the organizations that provide services need protection to make them whole in situations that don’t go as planned, whether a lawsuit or a car accident.”
Thanks to his efforts and those of his brother Michael, Lamb’s national sales director, the firm has been named a top-100 insurance agency nationally and an INC. 5000 Fastest Growing Company. Lamb now counts 6,000 clients across the country – with a majority in the tri-state area – and $400 million in premiums.
The numbers are impressive, but Lamberg is proud to serve organizations both grassroots and industry-leading, with budgets ranging from $5,000 to $300 million. Among them are some of the nation’s largest mental health, adoption, foster care and housing providers; Lamb insures $700 million in real estate, including New York City’s largest homeless-shelter network.
Lamberg grew up outside Philadelphia, where his father, an apparel salesman, inspired an entrepreneurial streak. After an early career in professional baseball, Lamberg took a job with a human-services insurer – and found his niche.
“This area of insurance feels so rewarding,” says Lamberg, who donates $1 million annually to charity. “I’ve always been drawn to making the world a better place.”
Beth Larsen
Beth Larsen has no patience for social-services colleagues who blithely dismiss numbers. “Too often, we see a silo between programs and finance, but that puts you at a disadvantage,” says Larsen, a social worker who now advises nonprofits on management and finance. “You need strong collaboration across the organization to have the most positive impact.”
On a mission to drive this message home, Larsen transitioned from clinical practice to management and, as of last fall, to JMT Consulting, a national outfit where she heads client advisory services. Shuttling between her Michigan base and New York, where her nonprofit clients number in the hundreds, Larsen preaches the necessity of sound financial management to her human-services colleagues.
It was a message she imparted for years at Grand Valley State University, where she taught human services administration. “Finance is at the core of everything nonprofits do,” Larsen says. Today's leaders need “a systemic and operational perspective, understanding the interdependencies within any organization.”
Larsen is herself a Grand Valley social-work graduate. Her early work convinced her that many patients’ challenges stem from systemic barriers most effectively tackled at the management level.
That led to an education in grants and budgets – and Larsen taking on a significant role for seven years at the helm of the Michigan nonprofit Resilience: Advocates for Ending Violence. There, she built a multimillion-dollar endowment to ensure the organization’s sustainability.
“I’m loving this chapter of my career,” Larsen says. “Being able to give back, mentoring and advising peers in the sector.”
Jennifer Leonardi
At Barclay Damon, attorney Jennifer Leonardi is grateful for the opportunity to have built a litigation career that specializes in defense against asbestos and lead-paint claims. But she feels especially lucky to be part of a law firm that prioritizes pro bono work. “It’s a great opportunity to help people,” says Leonardi, the firm’s pro bono partner. “We’re all involved in the community here.”
Under her leadership, Barclay Damon boasts a 100% participation rate in pro bono service among both full-time attorneys and paralegals. Leonardi also collaborates with her counterparts in other Barclay Damon offices and with community organizations to connect low-income clients with the professionals best suited to help on a range of issues – from immigration and housing to prisoners’ rights and economic development.
“We also get individual cases of people that don’t have the financial means to form a corporation, or to defend themselves in a civil lawsuit,” says the Villanova Law graduate. That’s where her litigation skills come in: “You hear the relief in people’s voices – that they don’t have to do this themselves, they’ve got someone to guide them.”
Based in Buffalo, where she grew up, Leonardi also serves on the firm’s diversity partner committee and its women’s forum. She speaks enthusiastically of a Buffalo volunteer lawyers’ project that runs walk-in clinics for common issues like family law, immigration and Social Security. “Doing that over the years has been something that I’ve particularly enjoyed,” she says.
Pascale Leone
Decades before she assumed the role of executive director at the Supportive Housing Network of New York, Pascale Leone was a child marching across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the stigmatization of Haitians during the AIDS epidemic. Shortly thereafter, her mother, a nurse and labor organizer, told a young Pascale that Haitians were no longer banned from donating blood. “Seeing the power of organization and advocacy – that really stuck with me,” Leone says.
When she was 7 years old, Leone’s house burned down. Her family lived with neighbors for six months – so she can relate to the insecurity that plagues the clients that are served by the Supportive Housing Network of New York’s 200-plus member organizations.
Leone brings those early lessons in hardship and solidarity to her work on behalf of New York’s housing insecure population. With a budget of $3.5 million – up nearly $1 million since 2022, thanks to more foundational support – she has grown the group’s membership, planned an expansion beyond New York City and spearheaded much-needed research into her sector.
The organization recently released the first comprehensive report of the statewide supportive housing landscape, illuminating an effective but fragmented network with more than 40 eligibility criteria. “Our provider community has created the largest and most innovative supportive housing stock in the nation,” Leone says. “But if the system is complicated for us, imagine how complicated it is for those trying to access services. So we see this data as a tool to drive policy – and change.”
Diane Louard-Michel
Diane Louard-Michel studied architecture at Yale and earned a master’s in historic preservation from Columbia. Yet the buildings she manages at Lantern Community Services are neither architecturally distinguished nor historically noteworthy; rather, they offer supportive housing for New Yorkers struggling with homelessness, mental illness and disability.
“It turns out I really wanted to house people,” says Louard-Michel, explaining her pivot to social services. Her altruistic impulse is, in retrospect, hardly surprising: Both parents were social workers and civil rights activists.
At Lantern, Louard-Michel oversees a staff of 250 and a $42 million budget – up from just $15 million when she arrived five years ago. She recently opened the organization’s 17th supportive housing project, which includes a cultural center, and recently launched two shelters (there are now three) to accommodate what she calls “explosive growth” in need.
Louard-Michel began her career renovating huge tracts of the South Bronx and Harlem with the New York City Housing Department, a role she characterizes as “fun and exciting.” Recruited to The Corporation for Supportive Housing, she worked on a multiyear effort to change state policy around supportive-housing funding; she also helped the startup raise money to renovate buildings.
At Lantern, which currently houses 1,100 people, “we provide people with the tools they need to integrate successfully into the greater committee community,” Louard-Michel says. The need is greater than ever, but that doesn't faze her: “I never met a problem I didn't like,” she says, “because there’s the opportunity to do something in a better way.”
Carrie Mauer
For Carrie Mauer, running a charter school network during the COVID-19 pandemic amounted to a master class in management skills. “(I was) figuring out how to get 2,000 students into remote and hybrid learning,” says Mauer, then the CEO of Brooklyn-based Explore Schools, “managing safety plans, getting everybody technology – and ensuring basic needs were met.”
Mauer brings those lessons to her current role at the nonprofit consultancy Carey & Co, where she is the practice lead for people and strategy, advising a range of organizations – from social services and religious groups to charter schools.
“The challenges facing nonprofits and schools are similar,” Mauer says. After years of dealing with day-to-day classroom crises, she is relishing the opportunity to work across industries. “It’s nice being able to step back and have a bird’s-eye view and to be able to connect the dots for folks,” she says. “And to share best practices: ‘Oh, this client is doing it this way.’”
Originally from Cincinnati, Mauer studied political science at Brown University, then began her career in planning and development with Providence Public Schools. She came to New York City in 2008 to oversee strategy and operations for the KIPP Foundation, North America’s largest network of public charter schools.
Having her own two children now in school gives Mauer yet more perspective. “I already know the complexities of running a school,” says the settled Brooklynite. “But there are definitely policies I understand differently now that I’m on the other side.”
Joseph Milano
Joseph Milano made his name as a litigator, at one point serving as a special assistant to the state attorney general. But in the latest chapter of his storied career, Milano concentrates on advising and defending religious institutions of all denominations.
“I’ve been a prosecutor, a defense lawyer. This is my last lap,” says Milano, a partner with Capell Barnett Matalon & Schoenfeld. “After all these years of just being on the board, I’m finally getting involved in these organizations.”
These include institutions on his home turf of Central Queens, like the Forest Hills Jewish Center and the Samuel Field Y, along with numerous Lutheran schools. He counsels diminishing congregations on strategies for staying solvent, including the legalities of monetizing buildings or merging. “We were one of the first law firms to do that,” Milano says, noting that his firm has a long history of representing nonprofit institutions.
Lately, Milano walks religious groups through the legal thickets around migrant sanctuary guidelines and support for transgender youth. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he advised one school on how to handle the discovery of fraudulent vaccine certificates.
Working with religious outfits is more than a mission; it’s also a change of pace from the rancor Milano saw so often as a litigator. “This just dropped into my lap, and I’ve been really lucky,” he says. “These are such good, honorable and decent people. In so many ways, they are really trying to help others.”
Jonathan Monsalve
At the Osborne Association, which supports incarcerated people and their families, interim President and CEO Jonathan Monsalve has championed video visits to keep families connected during prison sentences. He also strengthened Osborne’s kinship reentry program, providing direct cash assistance to relatives of people coming home from jail.
For these initiatives, Monsalve has a personal motivation. “Growing up, I had a front-row seat to the horrors and indignities for folks who experience incarceration, and their children and families,” says Monsalve, whose Colombian immigrant family was at one point separated due to the system. His career was born of “a core belief that families don’t deserve to be ripped apart ... that we can do better.”
That conviction prompted him to earn criminal justice degrees from New Jersey City University, and to work on behalf of those affected. Many, like Monsalve’s family, were new Americans with scant resources; as executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project, he promoted sustainable alternatives to detention, incarceration and the bail system.
Monsalve also directed Brooklyn justice initiatives at the then-Center for Court Innovation, working on the 2019 rollout of a citywide supervised release program. At Osborne, he manages a $40 million budget, seven New York state offices and programs serving 10,000 clients statewide.
Advocacy is as urgent a priority for Monsalve as Osborne’s initiatives around health, education, housing and children’s services. “The change we’re looking for is huge,” he says. “It’s incremental. Just knowing that we’re taking the steps in that direction is good.”
Rigaud Noel
Everything Rigaud Noel does at New Settlement in the Bronx – the food pantry he introduced, the college readiness programs that broaden horizons, the wellness resources that improve neighborhood health – is, in some way, a tribute to his Haitian immigrant parents.
“There’s no greater motivation than watching your parents struggle,” says Noel, a Brooklyn native whose father worked two jobs to pay for his children’s Catholic schooling. “It inspired me to make sure no other family struggled that way.”
At New Settlement, which he joined in 2020, Noel presided over a rebranding campaign and the reopening of its community center. Annual revenue has grown by more than 50% – to $12 million – supporting 15,000 patrons.
Beyond numbers, Noel has prioritized strengthening community fabric – as evidenced by partnerships with local institutions like the Yankees and Montefiore Hospital. It’s a skill he previously cultivated as chief of partnerships for New York Edge, the city’s largest after-school program provider, where he oversaw a $50 million budget and significantly expanded its College Access program.
Noel was in high school when a mentor connected him with a youth development internship, “and I was hooked,” he says. “Ever since, I’ve wanted to advocate for the things we need.”
Most recently, he does that as a volunteer firefighter. “I wanted to support the community I live in, and set an example for my family and the children we serve,” he says. “That you can serve your community in a variety of ways – even after you clock out.”
Christine O’Connell
At the Riley’s Way Foundation, scientist and humanist Christine O’Connell is cultivating the next generation of empathic executives. “The world needs more kind leaders right now,” O’Connell says, “and investing in young people is the way to do that.”
Under O’Connell, Riley’s Way offers leadership programs for 350 high school and college students each year, including a national teen council and several annual retreats. O’Connell is especially proud of a yearlong fellowship, “A Call to Kindness,” which awards $5,000 apiece to as many as 100 young people to implement initiatives aimed at making communities better.
In New York City, teens have set up community refrigerators, stocked schools with period products and distributed craft kits to hospitalized children. One of O’Connell’s favorite projects was an Ohio high school initiative to ensure that no student sat alone at lunch. “At the end of the year, we got a note saying, ‘This program saved my life,’” she says.
After beginning her career with the New York City Parks Department, O’Connell earned a doctorate in marine and atmospheric sciences at Stony Brook University. Noticing that scientists struggled to engage audiences on important topics like climate change, she founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.
With Riley’s Way, O’Connell jumped at the opportunity to mold both young leaders and a fledgling organization (she has quadrupled the budget, to $2 million). “We’re going to change the way this generation values leadership,” she says. “They’ll see kindness and empathy as strength.”
CJ Orr
There’s taking work home – and then there’s going home with your colleagues, as CJ Orr does. As president and partner of Orr Group, a fundraising and consulting firm for nonprofits, Orr works all day alongside his father, then hangs out with him afterward. “It’s like a 24-hour job,” he says, grinning. “There’s no escaping the family. But we have a lot of fun.”
Orr literally grew up in the nonprofit space, stuffing envelopes in the family’s basement in Washington, D.C. After college, he started his career in a series of finance jobs in New York, where Orr Group is based.
The skills he learned in bond sales and trading now benefit Orr’s 100 nonprofit clients around the globe (30 are in New York). He has helped organizations launch funds, plan strategy and conduct fundraising campaigns that yield eight figures or more.
Among Orr’s clients is Echoing Green. He helped boost the group’s budget from $8 million to $20 million, raise $55 million in a single year and start a racial equity philanthropic fund. City Harvest, and Nicklaus Children's Hospital are other notable partners. So are the Robin Hood Foundation and Youth INC, which his father founded: “Together, they work with hundreds of nonprofits that touch every corner of the city.”
His own motivation is “really straightforward,” Orr says. “I love seeing nonprofits grow and increase their impact. That’s a win for me. That’s what makes me happy.”
Tomas Ramos
A thousand backpacks distributed each August to needy New York City students. Some 3,000 turkeys for hungry families at Thanksgiving. These aren’t the numbers Tomas Ramos thought he’d be working with as an undergraduate finance major – but while they’re a few decimal places short of what an investment banker might be used to, Ramos couldn’t be happier.
“I’m most proud of the small wins that we make,” says Ramos, the founder and CEO of Oyate Group, a New York City nonprofit dedicated to poverty alleviation. “When one former student comes back, saying they’re able to pay for their family’s groceries – that’s why we do this work.”
Ramos, a New York City native, graduated into a recession and took a program director job at an international school. The experience turned out to be formative: Years later, Ramos was receiving emails from grateful alumni.
“That’s when I found my purpose – when I realized I can impact young people’s lives,” he says.
In 2020, Ramos ran for Congress. Knocking on 10,000 doors provided a grassroots perspective that shaped Oyate, which he launched the same year, starting with a mobile vaccine unit.
Today, he oversees a $3 million budget that subsidizes internships at Bronx universities for disadvantaged young New Yorkers; community work in the Dominican Republic, the home country of many donors; and even a health clinic in Zambia, reflecting Ramos’ wanderlust and expansive sense of purpose.
“In just a short amount of time,” he says, “I’m proud of the outcomes we’ve been able to accomplish.”
Nicole Richards
Nicole Richards is a social worker whose efforts don’t stop with her clients. As senior vice president of adult services at HELP USA, she manages four transitional housing programs, coordinating 1,600 beds at 11 shelters in both New York and Las Vegas.
Since joining the organization two decades ago, Richards has also cultivated a more inclusive workplace culture and nurtured the next generation of social workers. “We’re trying to eliminate silos, because we all share a portfolio,” says Richards, who herself worked her way up from case management. “Every site has their own culture. But we’re all sharing our personal values and best practices.”
Richards took the initiative in promoting internal diversity, serving as the executive champion of HELP USA’s Black employee resource group – and as a mentor with Readying Emerging Leaders in Supportive Housing, founded in 2020 to advance racial equity in the sector. She also co-leads the Women in Leadership affinity group and is working on a mentoring group for case managers.
To ensure a steady flow of talent into the sector, Richards recently helped launch a social work internship program. Both housing newbies and veterans like Richards share knowledge and perspective at HELP USA’s quarterly housing roundtable, which she also organizes.
Now Richards is focused on raising salaries to bolster recruitment, retention and team morale. “We need to match our talent,” she says, “as well as all the hard work that our employees do from the ground up.”
Lisa Rivera
Over two decades with the New York Legal Assistance Group, Lisa Rivera has helped clients throughout the five boroughs and neighboring suburbs with free legal assistance around immigration, health care, Medicaid and housing.
“I’m hoping none of these areas are things people will still need help with in another 20 years,” says Rivera, who’s now the first person of color and first Hispanic to lead NYLAG. “But there needs to be some big systemic reform for that!”
In the meantime, Rivera tackles these issues with the help of a 400-person staff and a $56 million budget.
Growing up in Brooklyn, Rivera got an early education in social services from her grandmother, who volunteered as a foster-care parent. “I used to see kids come in and out of her house severely traumatized,” Rivera says. “These were things that formed my identity – knowing there were survivors of violence and kids that didn’t have a voice.”
During law school, she interned with the Children’s Defense Fund and with the juvenile rights division at the local public defender’s office. She has taught future public defenders as co-director of the Domestic Violence Clinical Center at St. John’s University School of Law, and has developed trainings for the National District Attorneys Association.
“There are never going to be enough advocates to meet every single New Yorker’s need,” Rivera says. Instead, she hopes to empower clients “so they can advocate for themselves – and to be ambassadors of that power to their community.”
Raysa S. Rodriguez
Raysa Rodriguez’s social services career began in a Bronx kindergarten classroom. “That’s where I became intimately aware of the myriad of social issues our communities were grappling with,” says the onetime teacher. “I realized I wanted to work on macro-level issues and solutions.”
Rodriguez now works on that bigger picture as chief program and policy officer for FPWA, formerly the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, a 170-organization coalition. She oversees a statewide strategy for such macro priorities as measuring economic insecurity by determining the true cost of living.
She is also a prominent voice in the movement to expand early childhood education and to increase pay for its workforce. The issue has long been central for Rodriguez, who worked on pre-K access as then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s senior policy adviser for children and families.
Born in the Bronx to Dominican immigrants, Rodriguez started out much like the children she crusades for. Her parents raised her with “a strong commitment to education as the great equalizer, the key to opportunity and mobility,” says Rodriguez, who holds an MSW from Columbia.
Her past advocacy has included roles with StudentsFirstNY, the United Way of New York City’s education division and, most recently, the Citizens Committee for Children of New York.
“My consistent passion has been ensuring positive outcomes for children who face poverty and economic insecurity, as well as systemic barriers that limit opportunity,” Rodriguez says. “That’s been a core of my professional life – trying to level the playing field as best as possible.”
Jody Rudin
Though she is a successful executive overseeing a $204 million budget, Jody Rudin has always felt a kinship with the marginalized clientele she serves.
Coming out as gay during a less-inclusive era “made me passionate about working with people who are a little bit outside society,” says Rudin, now the president and CEO of the Institute for Community Living. It also fueled her desire “to create inclusion in the context of organizational cultures, where everyone has a sense of belonging.”
Rudin brings that ethos to the organization, which annually serves 13,000 clients with complex needs throughout New York City’s five boroughs, integrating health care, housing and social services. Since joining three years ago, Rudin has grown the budget by 25% and added more than a dozen programs, including its first affordable supportive housing unit. With nearly 4,000 people sheltered through the Institute for Community Living, Rudin collaborates with the city’s homeless services department, where she previously supervised the adult shelter system.
The Long Island native found her path as a new college graduate, when, on a whim, she went to a New York City Council debate. One candidate, Christine Quinn, inspired Rudin to volunteer on the campaign, which led to a job as Quinn’s legislative aide. “I decided quickly that I wanted a career in public service,” Rudin says.
She has since earned a master’s degree in public administration and served as chief operating officer for several places. Yet Rudin still sounds, at times, like the idealistic youth who just discovered public service: “I feel like I lucked into this profession,” she says.
Monica Santos
At Services for the UnderServed, a New York City nonprofit, Monica Santos combines her passions for agriculture, social work and disability advocacy.
As a student at New York City’s only agriculture-centered high school, Santos fell in love with farming’s social-justice potential – an ethos she furthered in the Peace Corps, teaching agriculture in Botswana. Those experiences lay the groundwork for her urban farming and food-security initiatives with S:US, where she launched three community fridges during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Growing food is healing. It feeds the body and the soul,” Santos says. “And it’s a job skill." She stocks the fridges – like food pantries, but for perishables – with produce from New York state farms. Clients with disabilities help pack and distribute food to neighbors, including those in her nonprofit’s supportive housing – which is also in her portfolio – “so it ties in all the different pieces of what we do.”
The mission of S:US spans homelessness, poverty and disabilities. Its clients include domestic violence survivors, military veterans, people in recovery and those struggling with behavioral and mental-health challenges. Santos is well-equipped for these challenges, having previously spent a dozen years with AHRC New York City, where she spearheaded efforts to deinstitutionalize and integrate developmentally disabled clients.
Now she’s helping such clients integrate further through the community fridges, a concept she has promoted to organizations outside New York. “We all have the ability to make the world a better place,” she says, “and here at S:US, I get to do that every day.”
Fiona Sifontes
Some people choose their careers. Other people’s careers choose them – and that’s what happened to Fiona Sifontes, whose professional trajectory shifted 20 years ago when her baby boy was diagnosed with hypertonia, a disease involving too much muscle tone.
“That’s where it started,” says Sifontes, now CEO of the nonprofit New York Advocates 4 Kids. Desperate to navigate the labyrinth of public and educational resources for her son, she recalls, “I had to be my own advocate, and hire an advocate to help me.”
At the time, the New York City mom was working a customer service job and studying to become an occupational therapist. Now her boy is 20 and graduating from college – and Sifontes has helped hundreds of other special-needs children improve their odds.
She’s done this by coaching one parent at a time with NY Advocates 4 Kids, her certified minority- and woman-owned business. A paralegal credentialed in child development and autism, Sifontes works closely with attorneys and the New York City Department of Education to coordinate social services for underprivileged families.
Most of her clients come from the five boroughs and lower Westchester County. In addition to fighting for services, Sifontes also helps parents craft individualized education plans.
And every day, she’s grateful to be the guide she herself sorely lacked. “I wish I had known that the more questions you ask, the better,” she says. “Because if you don’t ask, you won't know. And then if you still need assistance, we’re here to help.”
Tricia Singh
As chief people officer of the ADAPT Community Network, Trisha Singh brings a personal commitment to people with disabilities, the organization’s clientele.
Singh grew up helping her own mother, who had a developmental disability. “So I know how difficult it is to gain independence,” she says, “and how valuable to have people to help you manage and be able to live a normal life.”
Through recruitment, training and retention efforts, Singh cultivates a community of 3,000 employees who staff 100 programs, from education and health to technology and recreation. She also co-chairs the Interagency Council of Developmental Disabilities, a 155-group umbrella organization.
At ADAPT, Singh spearheaded the first diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility and belonging initiative – which advocated for policies that favor diversity and holding workshops in partnership with other organizations.
For Singh, the initiative is just an extension of the inclusivity that powers ADAPT, which annually serves 20,000 New Yorkers with a range of disabilities. Under her leadership, staffers now regularly participate in trainings on LGBTQ+ and gender identity awareness; they also share foods from around the world at events celebrating cultural diversity.
A veteran of New York City agencies – including the fire department – Singh continues to draw inspiration from her own family. With a 20-year-old son now studying behavioral neuroscience (“I think I rubbed off on him a little,” she says) and a 3-year-old at home, Singh says, “It’s so important to help shape the future of both the children and the community.”
Carolann Slattery
As a child in her Rockland County Catholic school, Carolann Slattery was stigmatized for her kinetic energy – and even referred for special education. But one teacher, she recalls, fought to keep her in the mainstream classroom.
“I always said, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a special education teacher,’” Slattery recalls. “To advocate for people who are classified but shouldn’t be – or ones that should be and aren’t.”
From that conviction came doctorates in education and psychology, and a career devoted to vulnerable populations. Slattery currently oversees comprehensive human services for 33,000 people at Samaritan Daytop Village, which coordinates a 60-facility network throughout downstate New York.
She is also superintendent of its affiliated charter schools for at-risk youth, steering the modernization of the Daytop Preparatory Schools in Suffolk and Rockland counties. Slattery can often be found in the classroom herself, teaching both social work and psychology at Touro and St. Thomas Aquinas colleges.
At Samaritan Daytop Village, Slattery has positioned the organization at the forefront of myriad state initiatives. These include New York’s new outpatient addiction-licensing system and a behavioral health center program, as well as a 24/7 addiction and medication helpline. “You can get medication in the middle of the night. How amazing is that?” says Slattery, whose team answered 3,000 nighttime calls last year and issued hundreds of prescriptions.
Clearly, that childhood energy has channeled well into Slattery’s professional life. “It really does take a village,” she says. “I enjoy watching things grow.”
Kim Snyder
Not every social worker takes to clinical practice. Some, like Kim Snyder, find their niche in technology, helping clinicians to better organize their practices through digital systems.
“I like to meet people where they are with regard to technology,” says Snyder, who for the past decade has headed data strategy in service of nonprofits at RoundTable Technology. “I’m the guide that helps navigate this changing digital landscape for nonprofit professionals, who have more important things to attend to.”
Snyder grew up on the Bryn Mawr College campus in Pennsylvania, where her father was a professor and both parents instilled in her a reverence for the arts and education. After earning a fine-arts photography degree and an MSW, Snyder was drawn to the technology side of human services while working at Fountain House, the New York mental illness advocacy organization.
At Pearson, the global educational publisher, she led a global team in applying Agile methodologies to the content-creation process. Her current focus includes helping organizations assess their digital privacy – and keep up with a data-driven culture shift from the decades when nonprofits could survive on reputation alone. “Nowadays, you have to prove yourself through evidence,” she says.
Snyder also volunteers her digital know-how with the Westchester County Cybersecurity Task Force and with local GOTV and civic engagement initiatives. “I boil down what can feel like big, amorphous technologies to help organizations prioritize,” Snyder says. “And I like bringing these skills to my own community.”
Miriam Y. Vega
Miriam Y. Vega has lived in nearly two dozen cities, from Boston to Barcelona. She also resided in Berkeley, California, where she earned her doctorate in social psychology; in Los Angeles and Baltimore, where she ran community health centers; and in Atlanta, in a role with the Centers for Disease Control.
So it felt serendipitous when Vega landed just blocks from where she grew up in the Bronx to oversee Argus Community, a $55 million social services organization. A financial-turnaround expert, Vega now heads an organization that turns around people’s lives, helping clients overcome struggles from substance use to mental health to unemployment.
“It’s exciting going into a new place, with new challenges,” says Vega, whose current priorities include increasing annual dental access for up to 5,000 clients. At her last job, running the multi-site Joseph P. Addabbo Family Health Center in New York City, she turned an $8 million post-pandemic deficit into a $12 million surplus. “I know how to run things pretty lean,” Vega says, “and still provide services and increase staff morale.”
As a child in the Bronx, she resolved to be a psychologist to address the yawning social needs she saw around her. That mission still guides her, although Vega feels her impact is greatest at the community level. “It may sound cheesy, but I’m paying it forward to other people,” says Vega, whose journey first launched with a scholarship to Phillips Academy Andover. “I was able to succeed because people cared and helped me along the way.”
Kelly Weiss
Of the many ways people arrive at victim advocacy, Kelly Weiss’s is among the more unusual. She was studying English at the College of Saint Rose when, while coordinating a program for students with disabilities, she involved with educating people about sexuality and violence prevention.
Weiss finally has a statewide platform for an issue that, especially for disabled victims, is historically “underfunded and doesn’t get the attention it deserves,” she says. She recently became director of gender-based violence response for the state Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, collaborating with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration and various New York agencies.
In addition to being New York’s first female chief executive, Hochul had a mother who opened a domestic violence shelter. “So this is an issue that’s very close to her,” Weiss says, “and she’s clearly made it a priority.”
That support allows Weiss to focus on making domestic and sexual violence survivors’ services more available and accessible statewide, especially for people with disabilities. She draws on 20 years of experience with this population – including a decade at the College of Saint Rose, where Weiss collaborated with Planned Parenthood, the Title IX program and Albany County. She also became a qualified intellectual disability professional.
With vastly more resources at her disposal, Weiss is looking forward to further reducing inequities. “What drives me,” she says, “is knowing that every day, every single thing we’re doing is improving the lives and safety of New Yorkers.”
Patrick Yurgosky
Patrick Yurgosky grew up in France and Mexico, studied in West Virginia and worked in the Caribbean. But since landing in New York City for graduate work at The New School, “I don’t want to live anyplace else,” he says.
He’s equally clear about his professional home: nonprofit organizations, which he bolsters through his 12-year-old eponymous consultancy. “I cut my teeth in nonprofits,” he says. “All my experience has been about building and supporting communities through nonprofits.”
Yurgosky began his career at the Nature Conservancy before joining the Center for Employment Opportunities, a reentry workforce development organization. Over six years there, he became adept at the business analytics technology – especially Salesforce – which he realized could be enormously beneficial for a variety of nonprofits.
Since launching Yurgosky in 2012, the Rochester native has aggregated data to parse risk, cost and efficiencies on behalf of hundreds of clients, including such New York institutions as The Frick Collection, Bronxworks and New York Edge and global outfits such as the International Rescue Committee and Pearson, the educational publisher.
Yurgosky is especially proud of developing a framework that helps social-service clients identify special-needs children early on. For one Bronx nonprofit, he created a client stability index to evaluate outcomes and identify areas of need.
Settled in New York, he travels to Africa frequently and appreciates the perspective. “These people live very simply,” he says. “They’re managing inventory on a piece of paper. We’re marketed to for everything, but in reality, we don’t need much.”
Lewis Zuchman
When Lewis Zuchman looks back over a 40-year career in social services, his frustration over society’s persistent challenges is leavened by success stories like Jamel Oeser-Sweat.
A child of the New York City projects, Oeser-Sweat was 10 when he was referred to Supportive Children’s Advocacy Network, the agency – now known as SCAN-Harbor – that Zuchman has led since the 1980s. Oeser-Sweat flourished, becoming an attorney and, now, president of the SCAN-Harbor board of directors.
It’s a turnaround reminiscent of Zuchman’s own. Like many of the 7,000 Harlem and South Bronx youths his $28 million agency serves annually, the Forest Hills native had a troubled start. A childhood marked by loss and abuse led to an adolescence of organized crime.
Inspired by his idol, Jackie Robinson, Zuchman joined the Freedom Riders civil rights movement – and found a productive way to channel his anger, “helping myself as I helped others,” he recalls. Back in New York, he earned his MSW and committed to guiding others toward their own second chances.
At SCAN-Harbor’s 23 sites across New York, Zuchman hires neighborhood parents as his program directors. “That’s what I’m most proud of,” he says. “The majority of our staff came to us without any education.”
Empowered, many have gone on to earn degrees. “I’m not going to be Karl Marx or Trotsky. I ain’t changing the world,” Zuchman reflects. “But I can reach people who are struggling like I did as a kid. And part of changing the world is helping one person at a time.”
Correction: This post has been updated to reflect that Pascal Leone's Supportive Housing Network of New York is looking to expand beyond New York City, not New York state. This has also been updated to reflect that Jonathan Monsalve did not launch the Osborne Association’s kinship reentry program and that the organization operates statewide, not nationwide.
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