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May­or de Bla­sio Announces New Appoint­ments to Trust for Gov­er­nors Island Board of Directors

Apr 14, 2021 11:59 am

NEW YORK—May­or Bill de Bla­sio today announced the appoint­ments of Don­nel Baird, Alice Blank, Lisa Gar­cia, Grace Lee, Michael Oppen­heimer and Matthew Wash­ing­ton to the Trust for Gov­er­nors Island board of direc­tors. With lead­er­ship in green tech, cli­mate sci­ence, envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, archi­tec­ture, busi­ness, gov­ern­ment and advo­ca­cy, the appoint­ments announced today will bring years of expe­ri­ence to over­see the Trust’s activ­i­ties in the plan­ning, oper­a­tions and ongo­ing devel­op­ment of Gov­er­nors Island. 

The Trust for Gov­er­nors Island’s 17-mem­ber board pro­vides strate­gic over­sight, reviews and approves oper­at­ing and cap­i­tal bud­gets, autho­rizes leas­es on Gov­er­nors Island, and approves sig­nif­i­cant contracts. 

“The Trust for Gov­er­nors Island does extra­or­di­nary work to main­tain and improve an icon­ic open space in this city. These new expert voic­es will fur­ther that work and keep the island a vibrant, acces­si­ble, and enjoy­able des­ti­na­tion for gen­er­a­tions of New York­ers to come,” said May­or Bill de Bla­sio.

“As Gov­er­nors Island con­tin­ues it work in cre­at­ing a world-class cli­mate hub, it’s so impor­tant that it has board lead­er­ship to help achieve this goal,” said Deputy May­or Vic­ki Been. ​“Don­nel, Lisa and Michael are lead­ing voic­es in cli­mate and envi­ron­men­tal fields, and their exper­tise — along with the expe­ri­ence in archi­tec­ture, advo­ca­cy and gov­ern­ment that Alice, Grace and Matthew bring — will be crit­i­cal to mov­ing the Island towards its next, excit­ing phase.” 

“These six new board mem­bers bring a deep bench of expe­ri­ence and we’re hon­ored to have their lead­er­ship as we embark on an excit­ing moment for Gov­er­nors Island,” said Clare New­man, Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Trust for Gov­er­nors Island. ​“With strong ties to the New York City com­mu­ni­ty and vital exper­tise in civic, parks and envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship, we’re thrilled to part­ner with our board in real­iz­ing Gov­er­nors Island’s poten­tial as a recre­ation­al and cul­tur­al resource, and its grow­ing use as a cen­ter for cli­mate solutions.” 

This month, May­or de Bla­sio and the Trust announced Gov­er­nors Island will reopen the pub­lic on May 1^st, return­ing to its pre-pan­dem­ic sea­son cal­en­dar. In addi­tion to dai­ly Man­hat­tan fer­ry ser­vice, for the first time Gov­er­nors Island fer­ries will serve two Brook­lyn loca­tions for week­end ser­vice at Pier 6 in Brook­lyn Bridge Park and Atlantic Basin in Red Hook, allow­ing easy access to the Island for a wider range of Brook­lyn res­i­dents. For more infor­ma­tion, go to www​.gov​is​land​.org.

About today’s appointments:

Don­nel Baird

Don­nel Baird is the founder of BlocPow­er, a clean tech start­up based in New York City. BlocPow­er devel­ops port­fo­lios of clean ener­gy retro­fit oppor­tu­ni­ties in under­served com­mu­ni­ties, and con­nects those oppor­tu­ni­ties to investors seek­ing social, envi­ron­men­tal, and finan­cial returns. BlocPow­er cre­ates jobs for qual­i­fied local low-income work­ers, ener­gy sav­ings for com­mu­ni­ty insti­tu­tions, reduces car­bon emis­sions, and pro­vides returns to investors. BlocPow­er is backed by Kapor Cap­i­tal, Andreessen Horowitz, Eric and Wendy Schmidt, the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Insti­tute for social and envi­ron­men­tal impact, and Sales­force. Baird is a grad­u­ate of Duke Uni­ver­si­ty and Colum­bia Busi­ness School, where he was a recip­i­ent of the Board of Over­seers Fel­low­ship and a recip­i­ent of invest­ment from the Lang Fund for Entre­pre­neur­ial Ini­tia­tives. He spent four years as a polit­i­cal and com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er, and more than two years man­ag­ing a nation­al ini­tia­tive to lever­age Amer­i­can Rein­vest­ment and Recov­ery Act ener­gy effi­cien­cy invest­ments in under­served com­mu­ni­ties. Baird lives in his native bor­ough of Brook­lyn with his wife and son. 

Alice Blank

Alice Blank is the prin­ci­pal of Alice Blank, Archi­tect, an archi­tec­tur­al and design stu­dio car­ry­ing out inno­v­a­tive res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial projects in the met­ro­pol­i­tan region since 1995. Pri­or to estab­lish­ing her firm, she worked as an archi­tect and as an urban plan­ner in Cairo, Egypt and in Neucha­tel, Switzer­land. Alice has taught archi­tec­ture, land­scape archi­tec­ture and urban plan­ning at Hunter Col­lege, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia, and the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Amer­i­ca, and led sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al pub­lic design com­pe­ti­tions includ­ing Ideas Afloat – a series of com­pe­ti­tions and events that gen­er­at­ed devel­op­ment strate­gies for the 42 islands com­pris­ing the arch­i­pel­ago of New York City. She is the Vice Chair of Man­hat­tan Com­mu­ni­ty Board 1 and the Chair of the Board’s Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Com­mit­tee where she helps lead the Low­er Man­hat­tan com­mu­ni­ty in address­ing crit­i­cal land use issues in the City. Alice also serves as a Mem­ber of the Board of The City Club of New York and is active­ly involved with many of the City’s preser­va­tion and envi­ron­men­tal groups. 

Alice Blank will serve on the Trust’s Board of Direc­tors as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Man­hat­tan Com­mu­ni­ty Board 1. 

Lisa Gar­cia

Lisa Gar­cia is the Direc­tor of Fix, the cli­mate solu­tions lab from Grist​.org — a nation­al non­prof­it media orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to telling sto­ries of cli­mate solu­tions and a more just future. Gar­cia was brought on to help devel­op and run Fix, a new pro­gram that com­bines sto­ry­telling, events and net­work-build­ing focused on cli­mate jus­tice. Fix iden­ti­fies and lifts up a diverse array of lead­ers devel­op­ing solu­tions to envi­ron­men­tal and social-jus­tice chal­lenges and brings them togeth­er to break down silos, devel­op new col­lab­o­ra­tions, and accel­er­ate solu­tions to cli­mate change. 

In 2009, Gar­cia joined the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to lead the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency’s envi­ron­men­tal-jus­tice work, serv­ing as both an asso­ciate admin­is­tra­tor and advi­sor to EPA admin­is­tra­tors, Lisa P. Jack­son, and Gina McCarthy. Gar­cia helped cre­ate and imple­ment Plan EJ 2014, a roadmap for weav­ing envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice into all of the EPA’s work, and was the prin­ci­pal drafter of Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2014 procla­ma­tion on Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice. She also led the fed­er­al Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Inter­a­gency Work­group, col­lab­o­rat­ing with oth­er agen­cies across the U.S. gov­ern­ment to address some of the country’s most per­sis­tent envi­ron­men­tal challenges. 

Before join­ing Fix, Gar­cia was at the non­prof­it pub­lic-inter­est law orga­ni­za­tion Earth­jus­tice, where, as vice pres­i­dent, she led high-impact lit­i­ga­tion work designed to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies from tox­ic pes­ti­cides, refin­ery and fac­to­ry pol­lu­tion, chem­i­cal dump­ing, and unsus­tain­able indus­tri­al devel­op­ment. She also spear­head­ed an effort to build diverse part­ner­ships and coalitions. 

Gar­cia lives in Brook­lyn along with her fam­i­ly and pet tur­tle, Ziggy. 

Grace Lee

Grace is a Low­er Man­hat­tan res­i­dent, a moth­er of three chil­dren, a small busi­ness own­er and a com­mu­ni­ty activist. She is the co-founder of Chil­dren First, a par­ent-led activist group fight­ing for the safe cleanup of a tox­ic site locat­ed in the South Street Sea­port affect­ing thou­sands of chil­dren and res­i­dents in the dis­trict. Pri­or to Chil­dren First, she was the New York events direc­tor for Swing Left, a pro­gres­sive polit­i­cal group that helped Democ­rats take back the House fol­low­ing the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump. She is also the co-founder of Nine Nat­u­rals, a tox­in-free beau­ty line for preg­nant and new moms. Pri­or to her polit­i­cal and com­mu­ni­ty work, Grace was a Vice Pres­i­dent and equi­ty ana­lyst cov­er­ing the finan­cial sec­tor. Grace also serves on the Board of Trustees for the Bat­tery Conservancy. 

Grace Lee will serve on the Trust’s Board of Direc­tors as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of New York City Coun­cilmem­ber Mar­garet Chin. 

Michael Oppen­heimer

Michael Oppen­heimer is the Albert G. Mil­bank Pro­fes­sor of Geo­sciences and Inter­na­tion­al Affairs in the Prince­ton School of Pub­lic and Inter­na­tion­al Affairs (SPIA), the Depart­ment of Geo­sciences, and the High Mead­ows Envi­ron­men­tal Insti­tute at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. He is the Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Pol­i­cy Research on Ener­gy and the Envi­ron­ment (C‑PREE) at SPIA and Fac­ul­ty Asso­ciate of the Atmos­pher­ic and Ocean Sci­ences Pro­gram and the Prince­ton Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al and Region­al Studies. 

Oppen­heimer joined the Prince­ton fac­ul­ty after more than two decades with The Envi­ron­men­tal Defense Fund (EDF), a non-gov­ern­men­tal, envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion, where he served as chief sci­en­tist and man­ag­er of the Cli­mate and Air Pro­gram. He con­tin­ues to serve as a sci­ence advi­sor to EDF. 

Oppen­heimer is a long-time par­tic­i­pant in the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, most recent­ly serv­ing as a Coor­di­nat­ing Lead Author on IPCC’s Spe­cial Report on Oceans and Cryos­phere in a Chang­ing Cli­mate (2019) and as a Review Edi­tor on the upcom­ing Sixth Assess­ment Report. Oppen­heimer served pre­vi­ous­ly as a mem­ber of sev­er­al pan­els of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences as well as the Nation­al Acad­e­mies’ Board on Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies and the New York City Pan­el on Cli­mate Change, pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal advice to the City. He is also a win­ner of the 2010 Heinz Award and a Fel­low of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence. Oppen­heimer is co-edi­tor-in-chief of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal, Cli­mat­ic Change. 

Pri­or to his posi­tion at The Envi­ron­men­tal Defense Fund, Dr. Oppen­heimer served as Atom­ic and Mol­e­c­u­lar Astro­physi­cist at the Har­vard-Smith­son­ian Cen­ter for Astro­physics and Lec­tur­er on Astron­o­my at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. He received an S.B. in chem­istry from M.I.T., a Ph.D. in chem­i­cal physics from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go and pur­sued post-doc­tor­al research at the Har­vard-Smith­son­ian Cen­ter for Astrophysics. 

Matthew S. Washington

Matthew S. Wash­ing­ton is a Deputy Man­hat­tan Bor­ough Pres­i­dent where he over­sees the dis­tri­b­u­tion of over $130 mil­lion in cap­i­tal fund­ing to enhance parks, the­aters, hos­pi­tals, muse­ums, afford­able hous­ing devel­op­ments, com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters and pub­lic schools. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Matthew served as Deputy Direc­tor of Exter­nal Affairs at The Durst Orga­ni­za­tion where he man­aged pub­lic affairs for new devel­op­ment in Queens and oth­er projects, includ­ing New York Water Taxi. He has also served in a diverse back­ground in non-prof­it man­age­ment as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Friends of the High School for Envi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies and as Deputy Direc­tor of Friends of Hud­son Riv­er Park. 

Matthew Wash­ing­ton will serve on the Trust’s Board of Direc­tors as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Man­hat­tan Bor­ough Pres­i­dent Gale A. Brewer.