Elizabeth Lusskin is President of the Long Island City Partnership, which is the local development corporation for this westernmost neighborhood of Queens. She was formerly the Chief of Staff and VP of Strategic Initiatives at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University. She is an attorney with nearly two decades of experience in non-profit management, economic development and government service, and helped clients increase their effectiveness through improved focus, organizational structure and strategic implementation. Liz was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg to serve as a Public Member of NYC Loft Board, having completed a three-year term on the Rent Guidelines Board. Prior to consulting, her immediate past employment was as Deputy Commissioner for Programs and Development at the NYC Department of Small Business Services, focusing on reorganizing the Agency and reorienting its services to more effectively serve small businesses and entrepreneurs. For nearly seven years prior to joining the City, she was General Counsel of the Alliance for Downtown New York, Inc., a non-profit corporation that manages the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Business Improvement District. She has also served as a Legislative Counsel in the New York State Office of Federal Affairs in Washington, D.C., under Governor Mario M. Cuomo. She has held the Menapace Fellowship in Urban Land Use Law at the Municipal Art Society in New York City, where she acted as in-house counsel to that civic organization, which specializes in land use and historic preservation issues. She is a graduate of New York University School of Law, where she oversaw a revitalization of its Public Interest Law Foundation during her term as President, and of Yale University.