Lisette Nieves

Lisette Nieves is the president of the Fund for the City of New York (FCNY), an institution charged with developing and helping to implement innovations in policy, programs, practices, and technologies to improve the functioning of government agencies and nonprofit organizations in New York City and beyond. Key FCNY programs include the Cash Flow Loan Program, the Partnership Program, and the Sloan Public Service Awards.

Before joining FCNY, Lisette was the director of educational leadership and policy studies and a full clinical professor at NYU Steinhardt, where she co-led the design and implementation of a doctoral program in educational leadership and innovation and taught organizational theory and behavior and educational policy analysis.

Throughout her career of more than 25 years, Lisette has served in a variety of leadership positions in the public and private sectors. She founded Lingo Ventures, served as the Belle Zeller Distinguished Visiting Professor in Public Policy at the City University of New York at Brooklyn College, and was an Obama appointee on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

Earlier in her career, Lisette was the founding executive director of Year Up New York, an innovative workforce development program that started with a $250,000 seed grant and grew into a $6 million operation with more than 20 corporate partnerships in the span of five years under her leadership.

Her areas of interest include community colleges, college pathways, and workforce and education partnerships, which are all represented in the book she recently co-authored: Working to Learn: Disrupting the Divide Between College and Career Pathways for Young People.