A note from NYATEP's new Interim Executive Director
Apr 07, 2025
Dear Members of the NYATEP Community,
I am deeply honored to introduce myself as NYATEP’s interim Executive Director.
In this role, I plan to do much more listening than talking, as is appropriate for an organization dedicated to serving the field in large part by amplifying the views, aspirations, and concerns of its members. But to help frame our conversations to come, it might be useful to briefly share a bit about myself.
I am a proud “workforce lifer.” I began my career in the field in 2000, as a researcher with the Center for an Urban Future in New York City. After a decade at CUF, I entered city government, with positions at the NYC Department of Small Business Services and Department of Education. In 2015 I was appointed as the founding executive director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Youth Employment, a role I held until 2022. Since then, I have led my own consultancy, Altior Policy Solutions, working for clients in the nonprofit, government, philanthropy, and education sectors. Among my recent projects, I authored NYATEP’s last two State of the Workforce reports.
As workforce professionals, I believe we are deeply fortunate to do important work: helping people achieve greater agency, material comfort, and personal fulfillment through success in the labor market. My motivating values in this work are equity and efficiency. Any day we can make our small corner of the world a bit fairer or more rational is a good day.
NYATEP has helped make many of my best days in this field. Very early in my career, I had the great luck to meet John Twomey, then the executive director, who has been a mentor and a friend ever since. When John retired in 2012, he was succeeded by Melinda Mack, who became a dear friend, and remains the single most talented workforce practitioner I’ve ever known. I feel her loss every day, as we all do. A powerful motivation for me in taking this job is to honor the legacy that Melinda and John built over their tenures.
To do that, I’m going to need your knowledge, your perspective, and your wisdom. At my core, I am a researcher and a storyteller, and I want to understand the story of NYATEP and its members and partners as deeply as possible in order to tell it as well as I can. Keep an eye out for upcoming in-person and virtual community events in which we can connect, and in the meantime please feel free to reach out to me directly by email at [email protected], to share any ideas or concerns, or just to say hi.
I look forward to learning from you and partnering with you to advance our shared work.
Respectfully,
David
