jessica is the president of the alliance of downtown new york before she joined the downtown alliance oh i love that in a downtown alliance she ran for city council  yes well thank you and i have to say i'm honored that i get to be with you on such a special show kicking off your th year that's quite an accomplishment so thank you for giving me this honor not a nervous ok good good we would like to put you on the hot seat i mean i thought you were in action when you were a council member lap and then you were cool as a cucumber thank you for that you know it's it was a very challenging but rewarding job i loved being in the city council i loved being in the neighborhood working in the neighborhood where i lived and then getting to know people like you who are as volunteers spending an awful lot of time trying to make the neighborhood better excellent excellent jessica up before we go to your current work as president of the downtown alliance we're going to go over what's the big deal about audience tell us where you were born or something about your growing up years well i'm a lifelong new yorker so i was born in brooklyn but grew up in manhattan and went to the united nations international school  to eight and then went to stuyvesant for high school so that was a different time and the city obviously this is it is i was born in the seventy five so the late seventy's or you know certainly the east and you know i think everybody just how different it is today in safety being the main thing but you know in lots of other ways and my parents were really kind of dedicated to their neighborhood they weren't involved in politics but they were involved in the neighborhood association and we would talk a lot at the dinner table about what was going on in the world and i loved growing up in the city having opportunities as a kid to go to the best cultural institutions in the world to you know a lot of times for free to have access to all kinds of things you just don't have when you're outside of the city i was not a runner then in fact i was a competitive ice skater really i was four i started when i was pretty young and then skated through high school i would go on sky rank but way before there was a chelsea piers sky rank was in an office building huge to a much larger building downtown ok and that was really at the time kind of you know downtown was a bit of an outpost right there weren't a lot of people living downtown at all you know tribe echo was starting to take hero yes and as i trained over the years i would go out to idaho in the summers i went to canada a couple summers idaho couple of three summers with different coaches and nancy kerrigan who certainly people know she would come sometimes to idaho for are you some you went on to college i went to georgetown university washington well it is in washington d c where you decide to become a lawyer because that seems to be a good school for a lawyer and it is a good school for a lawyer and i did not become a lawyer but i was interested i guess at that point even though i didn't realize it i was somewhat interested in politics and government and that wasn't why i went to georgetown but i liked that it was a place where i could have access to capitol hill and be kind of in the middle of it all is great great theater and had a lot to offer in terms of food and culture and what was your major i was a double major in french and government i speak french because i went was going to the united nations international school growing up for no good reason that i know of they put me in a bilingual class in kindergarten so everybody else spoke french at home i was the only non native french speaker they never did very well in french but i learned a lot and like even by the time i got to stuyvesant you know freshman year i was already taking senior level so it was an easy thing to do it georgetown and it gave me access to all kinds of interesting classes  french so and then i studied in paris for a year spent a full year sales for which is the top government school in france as well so that was part of the school program it was sort of a junior year past it was it was it was hard in that you don't stay in dorms like you would here where you're forced to meet other kids so it was a little bit harder to break in but i'm not complaining i got to college i left skating behind and i became a varsity college sailor so i hope this made into sports they've just always been different so i said oh yes actually georgetown had a pretty good sailing team when i was there i was fortunate enough to go to nationals a couple times with the women's team so very different very different from my so no but i skated well we get there you're part of a crew which is one of the things i loved about it because as you get right and i love running and i sport when you're not on the team i loved being on a team which had all i guess or girls there were gods that were coed and then regattas that were women only and i did both i primarily sailed on the coed team actually because of just my size my weight i was the right fit for certain of our male skippers but when it came time to qualify and to go to nationals i would usually switch over i would do both yeah and i ended up qualifying with the so what obviously these things will never never forget so i have to call it she wanted to decide a career for yourself what was the process for that you know i didn't know exactly what i wanted to do and i while i was at georgetown i had spent time interning for senator moynihan who was just an incredible person new york senator it was the seat that hillary clinton and uptaking when he ran or i'm tired he was an ally and you know we don't have senators like that anymore somebody who would retire to his house and the summer time and write a book you know every year he thinks that a very deep thinker yeah and right right difficult thorny topics  the stick to for you yes he did have a very distinctive voice and tough you know he grew up in hell's kitchen when it was hell's kitchen but i had worked in his press office primarily and thought maybe that pres r was what i was more interested in and so my st job out of college was working for christian dior as in their communications marketing press department so they have the fashion house on the perfume and makeup how so i was in the perfume makeup side ok as much as i love fashion and perfume and makeup i realized pretty quickly that i didn't want to be writing copy about lipstick shades for the rest i lie for sad so i just blindly sent  resume around i networked i met with everybody who would meet with me and it up working for gifford miller who was my predecessor in the city county city council he was elected in ninety six ok and he was very young he was in his twent eight years do you do you see it from a very different side as a staff person and i did i got to know how it really worked i got to know a lot of the members who ended up becoming colleagues and it was it was a very exciting time it was a tough time in fact it he became speaker in january of two thousand and two to bloomberg was brand new yeah and he was a fantastic mayor and i loved working with him but i think people forget he had a tough time at the beginning because it was so different from anything he'd ever done so it was it was a very tough time in the city's history but a very interesting time to be kind of in the heart of it all and trying to figure out how we would build our way back ok and council members are term limited when in a few public offices star so some prefer to have to do something else and then that's what it decided to stop but it is a do you drafted or did you know you were going to do it i knew that i wanted to do it i'm not sure when there wasn't sort of a moment there was no sort of a pitch any but my husband was very supportive has always been very supportive well let's talk about him mr story and meeting him we met in two thousand right after al gore lost oh gosh hanging yes my best friend from stuyvesant was dating his roommate i was depressed and complaining and he was depressed and complaining and she basically said i'm sick of hearing about th obviously you one year you're now a junior council member now what was your physical activity at that time i was not running and i would go to the gym but i didn't have any you know i would do i was big into step limits junior doesn't mean much because everybody's turning over all the time so my st term i was chair of one of the when you subcommittees in charge of landmark's public sighting which means approving new schools or daycare to set revenue numbers but you do have the power to pass the city budget and you have the ultimate say in land use decisions in the city so to me and to my mind i thought well i want to do where the action is right where the power is and really having an impact in communities so i was very happy to be landmarks there and it really got me out into the city to get to learn the city of the neighborhood all those labarga we got lots of it oh my god and the public citing to you know bloomberg had a very active educational both things about being council member and i would say there's the legislative piece of things and i was really proud of a number of bills that i wrote that were signed into law one protected does protect a woman's right to choose by requiring crisis pregnancy centers which are sort of fake medical clinics to be more honest and upfront about the services they do or do not provide i wrote the city's public space recycling law so now you know when you see garbage cans on the street for newspapers or cups or aluminum cans that's as a result of that bill so i mean there were things like that that were to me very rewarding but i would say maybe even more was working directly with constituents and we were talking about the schools but there was a group of parents in particular who were very organized very active and we work together to open five new schools and that is very meaningful and one you get to become friends with those people you get to know them and their kids but to feel like together you can really make a difference is very empowering w the st time i did a race and that really got me running well back in two thousand and twelve so pretty recently my husband's involved with a charity called the equal of the so a foundation and in fact they were at the time headquartered on roosevelt island it's roosevelt island family that start of the charity and they did a five k to run around the island which was i think the st time that it happened now there are lots of races on the island and my husband said let's do it and i said you're nuts i don't i don't run know how to run i can't do a five k that's crazy i loved it it was fun it was really i mean it's a manageable distance but the st time you do it it seems like right right  specifically on an african american and latino recruitment because there just aren't very many or are there weren't very many people of color in the registry and they have become the largest recruiter in the country a lot of fun and you don't go over the bridge but you're running in brooklyn along the water along the parkway sort of back and out and back ok so beautiful and flat oh ok oh so you have to read the new york city marathon to cross the so i did the new york city half that year i couldn't believe it that i got into the lottery for the new york city marathon that fall that we did i don't know i think ten percent of people get in and i almost half heartedly put my name in you know i wasn't sure and then once i got in on the lottery i didn't even tell my husband because i said i'll never get in but then when i did i said honey i have something to tell you because it's a lot of time that you have to train he was the one well i said look here's my promise my training in the morning i'm going to make sure it doesn't interfere with you or the kids you tell me what time you need to leave every morning and i will be back whatever time that is all those get up earlier and so that we made a play and we made it so did you train by yourself befor perfect great they had to little cogs that a little gatorade or whatever you needed to go away for the next row and you got your st marathon under your belt and i meant to do the president with the downtown alliance so when did that happen so i became president of the alliance in february of of that year fourteen was a big year for me the marathon that's my job yes and it's been just really in terms of what's happening in lower manhattan  terrific time to be an volved with the alliance ok ok that's i meant to that it's it's considered a business improvement district yes which is totally different from a chamber of commerce totally different from merchants associations so it's short what is the big deal about a business so a business improvement district and then over seventy of them in the city but they are defined geography ours is everything pretty much south of city hall except for a park city and it is funded by the commercial owners meaning you know office landlords in the bid boundaries and they pay an additional tax levied on the tax levy that we collect the city collects for us and that funds our budget we are by by budget dollars the largest in the city and the largest in north america and what we do is we have a public safety and a sanitation department that keep the neighborhood clean and safe things like removing graffiti and emptying garbage cans we have a free bus service that we run around the pro matter of lower manhattan to speak and hop o free great we also do homeless outreach which is important so those are some of the core services we provide but on top of that we do economic development and research for the neighborhood we have somebody who works on tourism and we also have a marketing and communications department that tries to well now it's good news right point in our history it's been trying to reshape the story of right right right right we should mention that  back guy so all the bits do you know what they do to plan things to the holiday seasons you probably do that oh absolutely we put up lights during the holidays we have planters we maintain the public parks downtown we maintain all of the d pedestrian plaza as we have planters on greenwich street so yes and street furniture as a matter of fact on broadway yeah i mean we own half of the light poles i mean things you wouldn't think about so it's you know the bid can be one block long or one square mile they really vary in terms of their geographic size and their budget but for us it's nice to be able to and pretty direct ways really impact the neighborhood and you know even though it's safer than it used to be our public safety officers act as embassadors they direct tourist but sometimes they do work hand in hand with the police in apprehending people who are committing crimes yeah yeah yeah and also trying to manage the vendors the street vendors there is actually vendors are a huge issue and we you know part of it as you probably know from your volunteer work the enforcement is hard because the usual we while well intentioned the police officers don't understand all of the rules are these are complicated and arcane we are educated and we get to know all of the vendors in the neighborhood and so we make sure that they're where they're supposed to be doing what they're supposed to be and we've had a big issue recently with people selling tickets in the battery either scamming tourists or you meet the right the ferry to the statue of liberty right yeah or being violent with each other fighting over turf turf oh so that's something where we work with the city council last year to get a new law put on the books to the sea level rise continues at the pace that that it has so that's something where we've worked with the last federal administration in terms of getting money and resources to new york to try and address climate  last year or two in the spring i broke it in three places and have a couple of plates and twelve screws in there so every time you go to the airport you set off the alarms off you know believe it or not everybody asks me but i'm able to organization the downtown lower manhattan association so you're president of the lions and you also president of the association so what does the association do i'll give you the very brief answer the association and as rel center to be built for battery park city to be built i mean these things didn't exist and that was part of david rockefeller's vision and the vision of the association fast forward a few decades the association really laid the groundwork for the bid and we've kept them both because they allow us to do different things the association really is more of a membership group so we have speakers we have networking events it's a voluntary membership organization versus the alliance which is really you know everybody is a member everybody pays you know whether they want to or not right it's tax may have to agree when it is created but so it that's a