Lenny has over 30 years of experience helping social justice organizations and their leaders achieve ambitious goals. He was the long-serving Executive Director of the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem (NDS), a nationally renowned community-based defender office that demonstrated a radically different approach to providing holistic and effective legal services. He more recently served for 13 years as the director of the Justice team at Open Society Foundations US, where he oversaw grant making and field engagement activities to reform, and ultimately transform the country’s criminal legal system. In that work, Lenny and his team sought to confront racially disparate practices and support the leadership of BIPOC leaders and communities most affected by current approaches.
Lenny’s coaching and organizational consulting work is grounded in an understanding of the challenges of running and growing nonprofit organizations, the critical importance of effective management and leadership, and the necessity of nurturing the capacity, passion, and conviction needed to do both. Lenny has a love for classroom teaching as well and currently serves as an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School, where he teaches lawyering skills courses. Lenny lives in Queens, NY, with his wife,
where they raised two sons. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking, watching professional sports,
gardening, and spending time with his granddaughters.