In 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed Nisha Agarwal as the Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. Agarwal has since pushed forward and implemented IDNYC, New York City’s municipal ID card, a program that ensures that all New York City residents have access to City services. More than 900,000 New York City residents have signed up in the two years the program has operated. Agarwal also supervises ActionNYC. ActionNYC connects New Yorkers with free, safe immigration legal services, and supports community-based organizations to increase services at the grassroots level.

Nisha Agarwal was raised in Fayetteville in upstate New York. The daughter of first generation Indian immigrants, she witnessed the immigrant experience in America first-hand. Her father, a nuclear engineer, and her mother, a psychologist, were consistently supportive Agarwal’s activism. Though new to America, her family was no stranger to activism. Her lineage includes many members with a commitment to social justice, including her grandfather who marched with Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian independence movement. (read more…)

David Goldin, Administrative Justice Coordinator

The 2005 City Charter Revision Commission proposed a Charter amendment to require the Mayor and the Chief Judge of the Office of the Administrative Trials and Hearings to create a code of ethics for the over 500 administrative law judges and hearing officers in the City’s administrative tribunals. At the time it was unclear to what extent the State Code of Judicial Conduct applied to and could be enforced against ALJs. The proposition passed, and in 2006 Mayor Bloomberg created the Office of the Administrative Justice Coordinator and appointed David Goldin as its head. Working with the Law Department and the Conflict of Interest Board, Goldin oversaw the creation of rules of conduct that ALJs use today. (read more…)

Professor Arthur S. Leonard. Image Credit: New York Law School

Arthur Leonard for 40 years has been one of the most important and most-read chronicler of the LGBT rights movement. In 1979, as the founder and president of the City’s Gay Lawyers Association Leonard began reporting judicial decisions involving LGBT rights and slipping them in the monthly mailer—this was the start of LGBT Law Notes. Originally a two-sided photocopied sheet of paper, LGBT Law Notes is now a monthly newsletter with a circulation of thousands. Leonard remains the Editor-in-Chief of the newsletter and performs the bulk of the writing. (read more…)

Gregory Dietrich.

Gregory Dietrich, Principal of Gregory Dietrich Preservation Consulting, works as one of the small number of privately practicing historic preservation consultants. His vocation brings him into close contact with regulatory bodies, developers, land use agencies, advocacy groups, non-profit organizations and more.  This gives him a unique perspective, and requires a wide range of expertise he continues to broaden.  In conversation, his intellectual versatility becomes readily apparent, as he discussed his work, his background, and his thoughts on development and preservation in the City.

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Carolyn Lisa Miller.

Carolyn Lisa Miller was born in Manhattan and raised in Edison, New Jersey. After graduating from Princeton University in 1992 with an English degree, she earned a JD from Columbia Law School in 1995. Miller has worked almost exclusively as a government attorney since she graduated law school.

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Health and Hospital Corporation General Counsel Salvatore J.  Russo. Image credit: HHC

Salvatore J. Russo is the senior vice president, general counsel, secretary to the board of directors, and a corporate officer at the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. HHC is the public benefit corporation responsible for administering the City’s municipal health care system, which involves the operation of eleven acute-care hospitals, four long-term-care facilities, and six diagnostic treatment centers. HHC functions like a voluntary, not-for-profit hospital with an $8 billion budget and approximately 36,000 direct employees, including 5,000 doctors.

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