Marge Rogatz, President of Community Advocates, Co-Chair of ERASE Racism
(PRWEB) April 18, 2016
Marge Rogatz, a longtime resident of Roslyn Heights and more recently of Port Washington, is a founding officer and current Co-Chair of ERASE Racism which has been working for fifteen years to eliminate barriers to racial equity on Long Island and beyond. Ms. Rogatz also is serving this year as Co-Chair of the Annual Benefit Committee responsible for planning the fundraising event that supports the organization’s significant research, education, policy advocacy, legal action and civic engagement activities. The ERASE Racism 2016 Annual Benefit will be held on June 8th at the Garden City Hotel.
Ms. Rogatz has been president and full-time unpaid CEO of Community Advocates since 1986. A nonprofit organization founded in 1972, Community Advocates has concentrated on addressing homelessness and the lack of affordable and equitable housing by supporting the development of safe, low-cost rental apartments in mixed income, integrated neighborhoods and downtowns across Long Island and mobilizing coordinated efforts to initiate and strengthen resources, programs and services to meet basic needs and combat discriminatory policies and practices.
Ms. Rogatz was a founder of the Nassau-Suffolk Coalition for the Homeless, serving as an officer on its executive board for 16 years and playing a leading role in helping the Coalition to bring some $70 million in HUD Homeless Assistance grants and other funding to nonprofit housing and service providers in Nassau County. She was a founder and an officer of Sustainable Long Island for 10 years and a founder of the Long Island Campaign for Affordable Rental Housing. She is an emerita member of board and grants committee of the Long Island Community Foundation. She served on the Nassau County Task Force on Homelessness and in 2007, was appointed by Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi as Chair of the Nassau County 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness, which she headed until 2010. In 2008, she was appointed by NYS Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli to the Board of Directors of the State of New York Mortgage Agency (SONYMA). In this capacity, she also serves on the Mortgage Insurance Fund Committee and on the NYS Homes & Community Renewal Governance and Program committees, participating in key statewide housing finance and development decisions.
Previously, Ms. Rogatz carried out consulting assignments in fields related to community development and human services for NYC Mayor John Lindsay, Nassau County Executive Eugene Nickerson and Suffolk County Executives Lee Dennison and John Klein. She also consulted for NYC Head Start and for community hospitals and organizations in East Harlem and the South Bronx. During the civil rights movement, Ms. Rogatz served as Special Assistant to James Farmer, National Director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
The ERASE Racism 2016 Benefit will honor Dr. William H. Johnson, Rockville Centre Superintendent of Schools, known nationally as an innovative expert in closing the achievement gap for poor and minority students, and Mr. Kevyn D. Orr, Partner-in-Charge at international law firm, Jones Day, for his groundbreaking success in bringing the historic, primarily African American city of Detroit back from the edge of financial collapse. ERASE Racism will also be presenting its Leadership Award to the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University for spotlighting the effect of racial disparities on Long Island.
For more information and to buy tickets, visit http://www.eraseracismny.org or call 516-921-4863.
About ERASE Racism: ERASE Racism is a regional organization that leads public policy advocacy campaigns and related programmatic initiatives to promote racial equity in areas such as housing, public school education and healthcare. It engages in a variety of research, education and consulting activities to identify and address institutional and structural racism, primarily on Long Island.