This fall brings some major shifts in leadership in the nonprofit sector. City Harvest, which provides food for over 800 community soup kitchens and food pantries, recently welcomed new Executive Director Sally Hernandez Pinero, deputy mayor under David Dinkins. Bronx-born Hernandez Pinero also served as deputy borough president of Manhattan and chair of both the Financial Services Corporation of New York City and the New York City Housing Authority. She joins City Harvest after also working in the private sector on the board of Con Edison, in law firms, real estate development, and mortgage lending. City Harvest, which annually collects 19 million pounds of food from restaurants, grocers, cafeterias and farms, was run for the last 11 years by Julie Erickson, who just took over as executive director for the New York Restoration Project, the Bette Midler-founded group working to preserve New York’s community green spaces.
Margie McHugh has resigned from her position as executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, where she worked for 15 years. McHugh was a 2001 recipient of the Ford Foundation’s Leadership For A Changing World Award for her advocacy work organizing New York-based nonprofits around immigration policy, labor, and education issues. In her place, Chung-Wha Hong, will take over in October. Hong is by no means new to the field of immigrant advocacy, having served as executive director at the National Korean American Service and Education Consortium, Inc. Before that, she worked at the Committee of Interns and Residents, a union, on health care issues and assisted the director of the Washington, DC-based Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. Hong continues as a member of the board of directors at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
In August, Harvey Newman became president and CEO of Lakeside Family and Children’s Services, a Spring Valley, New York residential program that provides respite, vocational instruction, medical care, foster care and adoption services for developmentally disabled children and their families for over 80 years. As deputy commissioner at the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, Newman supervised child care and Head Start. He previously ran the Center for Preventative Psychiatry in Westchester and Hamilton Madison House in New York City. Robert Lederman, who served the agency since 1980, is retiring.
Claire Haaga Altman, founder and president of Housing and Services, Inc, is stepping down from daily operation activities, though she will remain part-time to develop new programs at HSI. In her place, Lawrence Oaks, who has worked at the company since 1996 as property management associate and later vice president, will take over the company’s 535 units of affordable, supportive housing for low-income adults and families, overseeing the planned opening of two new buildings this year, one in Harlem for young adults leaving foster care, and another in the Bronx for families with AIDS. New to the company is Jessica Ziegler, who will become director of development and communications after having worked in New York City government for 8 years.
Allen Blitz, a project manager for the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board since 2003, is moving to the Parodneck Foundation as director of lending and finance. His principle responsibilities will include coordinating Parodneck’s role in the new PACE program, an anti-predatory-lending project sponsored by the city; and overseeing the foundation’s Senior Citizen Homeowner Assistance Program, along with other loan programs.
