Staff

Melissa Hall

Operations Manager

Melissa Hall manages the foundation’s financial and human resources activities. She provides administrative support to the program staff and acts as a liaison to the foundation’s trustees. Prior to her current position, Melissa served as program assistant and acting grants manager. Her other work experience includes positions as a financial assistant and education associate at St. Francis Xavier Action Youth Center. She was awarded an internship at the Municipal Credit Union by the African-American Credit Union Coalition. Melissa holds a bachelor of science in business management and finance from CUNY Brooklyn College. She is a Certified Not-for-Profit Accounting Professional.

Edna Iriarte

Program Officer

Prior to joining the New York Foundation in 2009, Edna provided administrative and programmatic support to several social justice initiatives. She conducted research that led to the creation of La Fuente’s New York Civic Participation Project and the Long Island Civic Participation Project, two labor and community partnerships that promote immigrant and workers rights. Edna’s philanthropic experience began in 1994 as a Women and Philanthropy intern with the Norman Foundation. At the New World Foundation, she helped to launch the Phoenix Fund for Workers and Communities and helped carve out an apprenticeship program for succeeding program associates. As an independent consultant, she partnered with Public Interest Projects and the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation. Edna holds a masters in urban planning from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.

Maria Mottola

Executive Director

Maria Mottola has been the Executive Director of the New York Foundation since 2003. She served as a Program Officer from 1994 to 2002.

Prior to joining the Foundation, from 1989 to 1994 she was Executive Director of the City Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a housing advocacy organization that promotes the reform of New York City's Housing Court. As the Task Force’s founding director, Ms. Mottola managed the group’s transition from a volunteer activist campaign to a fully staffed and funded organization. From 1984 to 1989, Ms. Mottola was the Director of Neighborhood Programs and a community organizer at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, a settlement house on the Eastside of Manhattan.

Ms. Mottola has taught community organizing at New York University School of Social Work and has been an adjunct instructor at the Hunter College Graduate School of Urban Affairs and Planning since 1996. Ms. Mottola was a Co-Chair of the Neighborhood Funders Group, a national affinity group from 2003 to 2006.

She received her undergraduate degree in liberal arts at the University of Toronto and a master's degree in social work from Fordham University.

Isabel Rivera

Grants Manager

Isabel has been with the New York Foundation since 1994. Isabel handles grants management, acts as the webmaster and coordinates the foundation’s Capacity Building Program. Isabel served as the Foundation’s program assistant prior to her current position. She’s a member of the Grants Manager Network. Prior to the New York Foundation, Isabel worked at Columbia University Medical Center’s Dermatopathology Department and at the New York Public Library. Isabel holds a bachelors degree in sociology from Hunter College. She lives in the Bronx with her husband and two sons.

Kevin Ryan

Program Director

Kevin came to the New York Foundation in 2002. He manages a portfolio of active grants for start up organizations that focus on community organizing and advocacy and also oversees the Foundation’s Capacity Building Program that includes workshops, small grants, and individual technical assistance requests. Kevin is also an adjunct instructor at Hunter College Graduate School of Urban Affairs and Planning and the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies. He also serves on the board of directors of the North Star Fund, Neighborhood Funders Group, La Lutta New Media Collective, and Green Worker Cooperatives. Prior to his work at the New York Foundation, Kevin was the Executive Director of Community Training and Resource Center, a housing preservation organization. He provided leadership to a staff of tenant organizers working to improve housing conditions for low-income New York City renters. Kevin holds a bachelors degree in sociology and urban studies from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and received a Masters of Urban Planning degree from the New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.