Shaina Feinberg has over a decade of experience working with non-profits and under-served communities. She was the Founder of WriteNY, an organization that merged with NYWC in 2002 when Shaina became NYWC’s first Program Director, a position she held from 2002-2004. She’s led workshops for NYWC in a variety of settings, including with people with mental disabilities at St. Francis Residence, with former sex workers at GEMS, and for seniors at Prime Time, where she currently leads a workshop. She is also a writer and performer and recently was featured on This American Life.
Marian Fontana has been a writer and performer for over twenty-five years. Her articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair Salon.com, The Guardian and more. Her memoir, A Widows Walk (Simon and Schuster, 2005), was included in People magazine’s Top Ten Great Reads of 2005 and the Washington Post’s Book Raves of 2005. A Widows Walk was also on the New York Times best-selling biography list and was nominated for the Books for A Better Life Award.
Her essays have appeared in the Random House anthologies Money Changes Everything (2007) and The Time of My Life (2008) and most recently in My Apocalypse for Sock Monkey Press in 2012. She has been featured on This American Life, CNN, Good Morning America, and All Things Considered. She recently completed a second memoir, which has been optioned by NBC. Marian’s plays and one-woman shows have appeared at Playwrights Horizons, the Vineyard Theater, Variety Arts and more. She is currently collaborating on a musical.
Marian founded the 9/11 Families Association and was the co-founder of Tribute NYC, a memorial museum where she served as Board President until 2007. She also served on the 9/11 Memorial Advisory Board, the Ebbets Field Memorial Board, Soaring Spirits, and Friends of Firefighters Advisory Board.
Frank Haberle is the Director of Grants and Foundation Relations of Computers for Youth, a National nonprofit dedicated to building the Home Learning Environment of low-income families. Frank is the former Director of Development of Community Resource Exchange and Roads to Success, and has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 20 years. He is also a fiction writer who has had short stories published in numerous literary journals.
Lisa H. Kim is an attorney with extensive experience in the financial sector. She has devoted the last several years to raising her three children, while volunteering for a number of school community projects.
Raina Wallens is a writer and longtime volunteer with NYWC. She has published 7 books for teenagers under pseudonyms, and her nonfiction has been published on The Huffington Post, amongst others. She’s led NYWC workshops with children living in public housing at the I Have A Dream Foundation, and with teens with incarcerated parents at Incarcerated Mothers. For the past several years, she’s volunteered managing grants for NYWC.
Aaron Zimmerman founded NYWC based on the success of the workshops he began in April 2000 at The Prince George, a supportive housing community for low-income, formerly homeless and special-needs populations. He has been leading creative writing workshops since 1997 through Manhattan Writers, a writing workshop program he founded. In that time, he has worked with hundreds of writers of all genres, ages and backgrounds. He was named as a 2005 Petra Fellow by The Petra Foundation for his “distinctive contributions to the rights, dignity and autonomy of others.” (Read Aaron Zimmerman’s profile by The Petra Foundation here.) He was named as one of the “Top 100 New Yorkers” of 2003 by New York Resident magazine for his work with NYWC. He also has taught creative writing at City College.
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