Quantcast

Cuomo selects York President to join job creation council

Cuomo selects York President to join job creation council
By Ivan Pereira

York College President Marcia Keizs will be bringing her years of expertise to help the city find a way to rebound from its economic woes.

Keizs was placed last week on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s New York City Regional Development Council, which will find ways to stimulate job growth in New York.

The president, who served on former Gov. Elliot Spitzer’s Higher Education Committee, said she would find a way to promote solutions that involved education to help fight unemployment.

“I look forward to working with distinguished colleagues from business, academia, labor, as well as our public officials, to develop innovative plans to generate economic growth for the New York City region,” she said in a statement.

Keizs, who has been the head of the CUNY college in Jamaica since 2005, will be joining other representatives from other areas in the business, economic and legal worlds. Other council members include Gail Grimmett, senior vice president for New York for Delta Airlines, Steve Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, and Kathryn Wilde, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for New York City.

CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein and American Express CEO Kenneth Chenault will co-chair the council. Keizs’s duties at York will not be affected by her appointment to the council, according to a spokeswoman for the school.

Cuomo said the Regional Development Council would be split up into different groups based on different regions in the state. Each of the council members will focus on his or her part of the state and have a clear plan on what needs to be done to get new jobs into neighborhoods, according to the governor.

“[It] will empower individual areas to chart their own course for job creation and growth,” he said in a statement.

Reach reporter Ivan Pereira by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 718-260-4546.