Board Member Nancy Hechinger leaves with our Thanks

01.27.21

Friends, Colleagues and Partners of the Freshkills Park Alliance,

On behalf of the Board of Directors at the Freshkills Park Alliance, with both sadness and gratitude, we are announcing the resignation of Nancy Hechinger from the Board.  She was a founding member of the Board in 2006 and has been an active and energetic contributor and source of support to the Freshkills Park Alliance ever since.

Nancy Hechinger is on the full-time faculty at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program. She has a diverse background in education–including multimedia and film production, the development of interactive museum exhibits, and publishing–and in the strategic uses of information and telecommunication technologies, focusing particularly on how technology might make science more accessible, and also promoting the teaching and learning of essential twenty-first-century skills.  She was the founding Director of the National Center for Science Literacy, Education, and Technology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Prior to that she was a founding partner and the Director of Technology for the Edison Project, a private company that manages public schools using a comprehensive new school design with technology at its core. She was on the Senior Design Team of Apple’s Multimedia Lab (1988-1990).

Nancy has been an advocate for Freshkills Park since helping to create the Alliance in 2006.   She participated in formative tasks including the first Strategic Plan, recruiting other board members and served on a number of committees including the Governance Committee.  She also used her platform at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program (ITP) to assist the Alliance with multiple undertakings.  Nancy connected the Freshkills Park Science and Art managers to a Kickstarter hackathon event hosted at ITP.  During the event, a team of volunteers designed a tweeting bird box that captured birds at Freshkills Park and sent the pictures to a twitter account for others to view.

In 2017, when the Science Manager organized the first Reclaimed Lands Conference, Nancy secured the conference venue at NYU’s ITP space and secured support from NYU staff that helped make the conference a success.  The location was perfect for allowing people from all over the region to access the conference, and the creative nature of the ITP program was a fitting backdrop for a conference examining new strategies for utilizing post-industrial reclaimed lands. In addition, she was always willing to contribute ideas and connections to the Alliance and its growth since 2006 is in no small part attributable to those contributions.

“On behalf of the board, the Freshkills Park team, and our partner agencies, I’d like to thank Nancy for the contributions she made during her time with the Alliance.  She has been an incredible friend and supporter of the Alliance, and personally, I will greatly miss her counsel.   Luckily, she is not going far and we will stay in touch” said Alliance President and Park Administrator Eloise Hirsh.”

Please join us in thanking Nancy for her support and generosity on behalf of the Park and in wishing her the best of luck in her future endeavors.

About the Freshkills Park Alliance

Freshkills Park is an extraordinary 2200-acre urban park that is a model for sustainable land reclamation, a source of pride for Staten Island and New York City, and a gift of open space for generations to come. Its landscape and amenities will be welcoming to all communities and an inspiration to artists, scientists, designers and planners around the world. To learn more about the Freshkills Park Alliance Board, click here.  Stay up to date with Park developments by signing up for our Newsletter today.

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