Anita Altman

Anita Altman (born June 2, 1945) is a social entrepreneur and city planner who has championed programs for the disadvantaged in New York City and beyond. During her long career, she mobilized a Jewish response to family violence, developed a broad array of services for people with disabilities, and helped develop Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs) into a federally funded program. She is the co-founder of ReelAbilities, US’s largest film festival dedicated to showcasing films by, or about, people with disabilities. She is an active Jewish Feminist, an important progressive voice in the Jewish community, and a member of NYC’s B’Nai Jeshrun synagogue. Altman is the mother of Sascha Altman DuBrul, co-founder of the Icarus Project.

Altman was raised in a working-class Greek Jewish community in the East Bronx. Her grandparents, Anna and Zadick Coffino, were Romaniote Jews, emigrated from what was then the Ottoman Empire to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, before settling in Hunts Point Her father, Jack Altman, an Ashkanazi Jew who married Sarah their daughter, was a plumber. She has one older brother Stanley Altman, who is now a professor at Baruch College.

Altman attended the all-girls' Hunter College High School and credits it with changing the course of her life. She received her B.A. in Political Science from The City College of New York in 1967, and a Master of Professional Studies in Health Services Administration from the New School for Social Research in 1982. In 2014 Altman was awarded the City Colleges' Alumni Association's Townsend Harris medal for outstanding post-graduate achievement.

While working at New York City’s Planning Department, Altman participated in developing the Master Plan for the city. In New York’s Health Services Administration, she played a leading role in upgrading prison health services. As the Director of Community Development for Co-op City (hired by the residents in the aftermath of the largest rent strike in American history), she organized and directed human service providers and mounted a wide array of cultural programs. As Deputy Director of Montefiore Medical Center’s Building Program, Altman worked with hospital administrators, architects, the City Planning Commission, and community representatives to help plan the reconstruction and expansion of its physical plant. For ten years (1973–83), Altman served on Manhattan’s Community Board 7, and was the co-chair of its Social and Health Care Services sub-committee, for a number of those years.

...
Wikipedia