Denise Scott is the new president of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and the first woman to hold this position in the organization’s history.
Scott’s appointment is a promotion from within as she has been the vice president of programs at LISC since 2014, responsible for leading nine national programs and nearly forty local program offices.
She first joined LISC in 2001 after a career in public service which took off when she served as the managing director responsible for launching the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation. Soon after, she would work in leadership positions at the Department of Housing and Urban Development as a direct White House appointee.
Making the transition to city-level public service, Scott also worked for New York City in the mayor’s Office of Housing Coordination. While there she became recognized for leading the New York City Department of Housing and Development’s Harlem Neighborhood Preservation Program office.
Scott has also more recently spent time in national-level economics working for the Federal Reserve. In 2016 she was brought on by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to be a Class C director, a position left open by the departing Dr. Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Despite initially being a temporary appointment, she would go on to be reappointed and has since risen to become the current chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“I’m truly honored to serve as president of LISC and to work closely with Lisa (the interim CEO) to deepen LISC’s impact in urban and rural communities,” said Scott in a press release about her promotion. “There is no other community development organization in the country that has LISC’s local capacity to break down race and class barriers and create new pathways to opportunity for those who have been excluded from our nation’s prosperity. I can’t think of a time when this work has been more important—for families, for communities and for our national economic outlook.”
Denise Scott was announced as LISC’s new president on December 9, 2021 and has already assumed the duties of the office.
