NAG board members & staff at the 2010 Sweet 16 Benefit Bash

NAG Staff

Peter Gillespie, Executive Director
Ryan Kuonen, Organizer
Michelle Rodecker, Administrative Assistant

 

 

Board Members

 

Susan Albrecht

Susan Albrecht has been a resident of Greenpoint for eighteen years. She joined the NAG Board in 2002. In 2000-2001, she served on the Brooklyn Community Board #1 Task Force on Mc Carren Park Pool, which resulted in an approved plan to reuse the abandoned pool space as a multi-faceted, year-round recreational facility. She is also a member of Park Moms, dedicated to improving the aesthetic and safety of the Mc Carren Park playground, and serves on the PTA Executive Committee for Beginning with Children Charter School is south Williamsburg. Professionally, Susan is Associate Director of Progress of Peoples Development Corporation, the housing affiliate of Brooklyn Catholic Charities. Prior to working with Catholic Charities, Susan was Director of Planning and Agency Relations for the United Way in Greenwich, CT. She has previously served on the Steering Committee of the Supportive Housing Network of New York and currently co-chairs the Housing Committee of the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City.

 

Allison Davis

Allison became involved in social and human rights activism at an early age, visiting a project her family worked on to help bring running water to a remote part of the Dominican Republic. Since her early exposure to social injustice, she has been involved with projects to help feed and house the homeless in her home state of Florida, organize events geared towards spreading the word of cruelties in Rwanda and Darfur, and additional events to protest the war in Iraq. After moving to the North Brooklyn area in 2003, she became interested in local history, issues and community organizing and worked on the Obama campaign, later attending the DNC as an elected delegate. She has also volunteered to help end cruelty to farm animals. She joined NAG in 2008 and is co-chair of the Affordable Housing Committee.

 

Ward Dennis (Co-Chair)

Ward Dennis has been a resident of Williamsburg since 1992. He is a partner at Higgins Quasebarth & Partners, LLC, a New York-based historic preservation consulting firm specializing in the restoration, rehabilitation and adaptive use of historic properties. Ward is also an adjunct assistant professor of historic preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Through his work and teaching, and his background in urban geography, Ward has extensive experience with land use and public review. Ward is the former land use chair for Community Board #1 and is a founding member of the Waterfront Preservation Alliance of Greenpoint & Williamsburg.

 

Melissa Estro

A Queens native, Melissa, by way of North Carolina and Ohio, made her way back to NY in 2002 and has called Greenpoint home for the last 5 years.  She is the newest addition to the NAG Board, joining in the Spring of 2011.  Graduating with a BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design she moved to the city to pursue Costume Design.  Her passion for the Arts, adventures in the world of political organizing, and love of taking something old, and making it new again, made her a perfect fit to help with one of NAG’s newest projects, turning the shuttered Engine 212 firehouse on Wythe Ave into the Northside Town Hall Community and Cultural Center.  She Co-Chaired the organizing committee for a large scale benefit, Taste Williamsburg Greenpoint in the Spring of 2010, to raise funds as well as the awareness needed to help make the space become a reality, and hopes to do it again this year.  She currently works as the Finance Associate at the Brooklyn Arts Council.

 

Emily Gallagher (Co-Chair)

Emily has been a Greenpoint resident since 2006. She pursues environmental and social justice with a neighborhood focus, getting her start writing about the toxic legacies of industrial Northside and creating a hands-on media literacy program for St. Nick’s after school program in Williamsburg. She also worked as a research assistant on the art project Superfund365, which lead her to co-create a workshop on digitally mapping toxic communities. Currently, Gallagher researches the social justice history of New York City for her collective. The Brooklyn Diggers.   She is employed as an Educator at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and holds a BA in Culture and Communications from Ithaca College (2006.)

 

Roseann Henry

Roseann was born and raised on the Northside and has long been concerned about environmental justice in her neighborhood. She is a Supervisor at the New York City Police Department’s Payroll Section. Roseann also serves as co-president of the Holy Family Church Ladies Guild.

 

Christine Holowacz

Christine Holowacz immigrated to the United States from Poland in 1972. She became involved in environmental issues in the Greenpoint community during the 1980s. President of the Greenpoint Property Owners since 1989, Christine devotes much of her time to issues concerning senior citizen homeowners. She is also the Church of St. Cecilia political and housing coordinator. Christine served on the Greenpoint Community Board #1′s 197a Committee as well as its Rezoning and Kosciusko Bridge upgrade Task Forces. She initiated the first meeting in the successful fight against the proposed Key Span/Con Edison power plant in Greenpoint, leading to the founding of GWAPP, which she co-chairs. She is currently part of the Greenpoint Coalition, St Nicholas Preservation and the Greenpoint Williamsburg Waterfront Task Force, and is the Community Liaison at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment plant for the Newntown Creek Monitor Committee (NCMC). Christine received the Woman of the Millennium and the Carmine “Dusty” De Chair Community awards from the Seneca Club, (2001 & 2002) for her work with GWAPP and a Citation in 2002 from the Borough President for her work in the Polish Community. She holds a BA in Economics and Accounting from Brooklyn College.

 

Felice Kirby

Born in NYC, Felice came to work in the Northside when she was hired by the late neighborhood activist Adam Veneski to build a community organizing department of the People’s Firehouse during the years of property abandonment and arson-for-profit schemes in the late 1970′s/early 80′s. She has been involved in many local volunteer-driven efforts to protect and increase affordable housing, jobs, health service clinics, senior housing, youth after school programs, and the renovations of Metropolitan Pool and the Williamsburg Bridge. In the late 1980′s, Felice joined the Citizens’ Committee for New York City where she pioneered a New York City and, later, national, program to train police officers in building partnerships with community organizations to prevent drug and violence. Felice is the managing partner of Teddy’s Bar and Grill, a 120-year old North Brooklyn business with a history of community involvement dating back to Tammany Hall, and is raising her family in the same building.

 

Jackie Moynahan

Jackie Moynahan is a resident Williamsburg performing artist/producer since 2002. Her artistic endeavors and work with the Williamsburg Art Nexus, (WAX) serving local artists lead Jackie to obtain her MS in Urban Policy, concentrated in community development finance from Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy. Jackie joined NAG in 2008 and currently works for the NYC Housing Development Corporation.

 

Jim Rodecker (Treasurer)

Born in Jersey City, Jim Rodecker arrived in Williamsburg in 1974. Jim worked at the Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal as the Accounting Manager until 1979 and continued his railroad employment with NY Dock Railway and NY Cross Harbor Railroad as the Comptroller until 1994. He along with 4 other great activists founded NAG in August of 1994. He has volunteered and worked actively with NAG since its inception. Jim is currently employed as Fiscal Officer for the North Brooklyn Coalition Against Family Violence and Real Estate Consultant for 77 South 6th LLC. He is Treasurer on the NAG Board of Directors.

 

Lacey Tauber (Secretary)

Lacey Tauber has lived in Williamsburg since 2006. She began organizing in New York City in 2004 as a member of Ladyfest NY, a collectively-run non-profit festival focusing on feminist art, music, performance, and skill sharing. Lacey then earned her Master’s in Historic Preservation from Pratt Institute in 2006. Her capstone paper focused on preservation’s place in environmental review, with the North Side as case study. Since then, she has served as a Preservation/Planning Fellow at the Pratt Center for Community Development, and Community Liaison at the Municipal Art Society’s Planning Center, where she coordinated the work of the Community-Based Planning Task Force. Lacey recently returned to Pratt as an administrator, visiting assistant professor, and graduate student in urban planning. An avid cyclist and pedestrian, Lacey chairs NAG’s Transportation Working Group.

 

Evan Thies

Evan Thies is the founder and president of Brooklyn Strategies, a communications and strategic services firm serving local and national non-profit, political, and corporate clients.  Evan spent years in public service as a senior adviser in the New York City Council, at the office of Sen. Hillary Clinton, and as a communications specialist for political campaigns, including Andrew Cuomo’s successful campaign for Attorney General.
As a private consultant, Evan works with some of the largest non-profit advocacy organizations in New York and in the country, fighting for the rights of blue-collar workers, wide-ranging improvements to environmental and education policy, economic and social justice, and good government.

 

Joe Weisbord

Joe is an urban planner with over 25 years of experience in affordable housing and community development in New York City and across the country. Joe has worked for the Pratt Center for Community Development, Corporation for Supportive Housing. and served as staff director of the Housing First! campaign from 2001 to 2004. He began his career in the construction industry working as a carpenter, electrician and contractor. He currently manages initiatives on homelessness and foreclosure prevention for Fannie Mae, the Washington, DC based housing finance company. Joe moved to the Northside in 1988 and is a founding member of the NAG board.