• Mission • Board of Directors • Program Staff • Foundation Supporters • Testimonials

Jody Kass co-founded and co-directs New Partners for Community Revitalization. Jody is responsible for managing the overall organization and the day-to-day activities of NPCR, including fund raising, operations of the board of directors, and conceiving and implementing a broad range of program activities.  NPCR’s integrated approach to community redevelopment includes:  

• Fund Program - Established and implementing the NY Metro Brownfields Redevelopment Fund Program, the first public-private, public purpose regional brownfields financing mechanism in the country to use public grant dollars to leverage private sector remediation loans. NPCR’s partners include the Low Income Investment Fund, Sustainable Long Island, the City of New York, Nassau County and the USEPA.
• START-UP Pool - Created and implementing the Strategic Technical Assistance Resources Targeted to Underutilized Properties Pool (or “START-UP Pool”), to advance 15 – 25 community-supported brownfield redevelopment projects in NYC over three years. Being capitalized at $1 million in philanthropic resources, the START-UP Pool provides flexible, targeted technical assistance to complicated community supported re-use projects.
• Policy Initiatives - Developing and leading federal, State and City brownfields policy and program initiatives that are informed by on-the-ground projects involved in NPCR’s Fund Program and Brownfields START-UP Pool.

Prior to NPCR, Jody was Vice President of the nonprofit NYC Housing Partnership, where she worked from 1989 to 2001.  During her 12 years at the Housing Partnership, Jody helped coordinate the construction of over 16,000 affordable housing units, representing over $1.5 billion in private investment in 50 low income communities around New York City. Working with dozens of builders, Jody managed the extraordinary regulatory issues that arose on development projects in the Partnership New Homes Program, Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Program, and Partnership Plaza/ANCHOR Neighborhood Retail Program. Her expertise covers coordinating the intersection of regulatory, financing and marketing issues; hazardous materials issues; sewer, highway and building permits; landmarks, archaeology, and historic rehabilitation tax credits; lead-based paint and asbestos issues; and zoning, and other land use and environmental approvals. Jody managed the Partnership’s Cooperative Sponsor role in the EPA-funded NYC Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative beginning in 1996, and she served on Governor Pataki’s Superfund Working Group from 1998-99.  Jody also created and coordinated the Pocantico Roundtable for Consensus on Brownfields and co-led the Brownfields Coalition, an association of over 100 diverse organizations who came together in support of the legislative proposal that emerged from the Pocantico Roundtable.

Email Jody at jodykass@npcr.net.  

Mathy Stanislaus co-directs New Partners for Community Revitalization. He facilitated the development of a community planning and financing program for redeveloping contaminated properties that focuses on communities that are socio-economically impacted by the presence of multiple brownfield sites. Elements of this program were incorporated into the New York State brownfields law.

Mathy has a law degree with bar admissions in the States of New York and New Jersey and a chemical engineering degree. He is former counsel for the United States Environmental Protection Agency and senior environmental associate in the environmental department of the law firm of Huber Lawrence & Abell. His areas of practice included litigation and negotiation of projects under the federal Clean Air Act, the cleanup of hazardous waste sites under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (“CERCLA”, which is also know as Superfund), the Clean Water Act, and the conduct of environmental impact review of projects under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Mathy is a founding and current board member of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, Inc., which is an alliance of community-based organizations throughout New York City that seeks to address issues of pollution burdens, environmental equity and rebuilding of communities. Mr. Stanislaus environmental justice activities includes chairing a Workgroup of the United States Environmental Protection Agency that investigated the targeting and clustering of waste transfer stations in low income and communities of color throughout the United States and developed recommendations to then USEPA Administrator Browner on regulatory actions to address the impacts to communities from solid waste transfer stations. He also advised the USEPA on strategies to address environmental justice within its brownfield redevelopment program. He provided testimony to the White House Council on Environmental Quality on March 6, 1999 and US House of Representative, May 25, 1999 on methods of integrating environmental protection, civil rights and sustainability into the Clinton Administration’s Development Agenda. As a member of United Nations Environment Programme - Environmental Advisory Council, he provided counsel to a United Nations’ summit in June 1994 that examined environmental issues affecting the indigenous communities of the Haudaunosaunee Confederacy, as part of United Nations’ International Year of the Indigenous Communities.

Email Mathy at mstanislaus@npcr.net.

Laura Truettner is the Environmental Loan Officer (ELO) for New Partners for Community Revitalization, Inc. (NPCR). A geologist by training with over 20 years experience in environmental consulting, Ms. Truettner has managed NPCR’s project work since 2005 through two key programs, the Brownfields START-UP Pool and the NY Metro Brownfield Redevelopment Fund Program (Metro Fund Program).

Through NPCR’s START-UP Pool, Ms. Truettner is involved in brownfield redevelopment projects in all five boroughs. She provides hands-on technical expertise to both for-profit and nonprofit development teams working to advance community supported redevelopment projects. Her expertise includes evaluation of schedule and costs for and technical assistance on investigative and remedial programs; RFP development; technical service provider contracting; regulatory programs and the coordination of remediation and construction on redevelopment projects.

Ms. Truettner led the public-private consulting and legal team that in 2004 developed the internal procedures for the Metro Fund Program, which include environmental underwriting guidelines, procedures for monitoring remediation loans and an early warning system that requires close monitoring of project costs and schedule and includes flags that trigger external action. As ELO, Ms. Truettner conducts quantitative and qualitative evaluations of environmental documents, remedial plans, environmental insurance policies, costs estimates and schedules.

Prior to joining NPCR, Ms. Truettner worked as an environmental consultant to private industry for sixteen years, first with McLaren/Hart and later with ERM where she managed their NYC Office. Ms. Truettner directed a range of petroleum and hazardous waste site investigation and remediation projects in New York, New Jersey and Michigan that were conducted under State and Federal Superfund, ISRA and NYSDEC Spills regulatory programs. She was responsible for project strategy, design of soil and groundwater investigation programs, management of field teams and contractors, data interpretation, report preparation, project budget and schedule compliance and regulatory agency negotiations. Ms. Truettner left ERM in 2000 and while obtaining a Masters Degree in Urban Planning at NYU began work with NPCR Co-Director Mathy Stanislaus as a technical advisor to community groups. Over the last six years she has worked with the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee, the Hunts Point Monitoring Committee and the Gowanus Community Stakeholders Group, on the mitigation of community impacts from large, multi-year, urban infrastructure construction projects.

Email Laura at ltruettner@npcr.net.