Brooklyn Heights Association Chooses New Executive Director

BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Prominent neighborhood group The Brooklyn Heights Association has named a former Small Business Services executive as its new leader.

Lara Birnback, who has worked in various positions focused on developing neighborhood projects across the country, will take over as the organization's executive director, the association announced last week. Birnback will replace Peter Bray, who left at the end of June to deal with a family health issue.

"Lara Birnback has over fifteen years of experience in the U.S. public, nonprofit, and international development sectors as a project leader, trainer/facilitator, and communications specialist," the organization said in the announcement.

Most recently, Birnback was the director of capacity building initiatives in the Neighborhood Development Division at NYC Small Business Services. There, she worked on providing tools, resources and professional and leadership development to neighborhood economic organizations across the city, BHA said.

Before that, Birnback had worked in various communities across the country "designing and implementing community and stakeholder engagement projects." She has also lived and worked overseas in a position with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and as a communications specialist for the United States Agency for International Development in Nairobi, Kenya.

Birnback, who lives in Brooklyn Heights with her family, has a masters degree in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a bachelors in Development Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. She was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in 1996.

The Brooklyn Heights Association started searching for its new executive director back in March, when Bray announced that he would step down over the summer.

Bray had started as executive director in 2015. The civic group is perhaps known most recently for its opposition to the city's plan to fix the BQE.

During his four years as director, Bray oversaw several initiatives, including legal action the organization took against developments in Brooklyn Bridge Park, the historic designation of two buildings on Montague Street and advocating for changes to both the city's plan for a new jail system and for reconstruction of the BQE.

On the BQE plan, The Brooklyn Heights Association has held protests and hired its own architects to come up with an alternative to the Department of Transportation's most likely proposal, which would shutdown the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and build a six-lane temporary highway.

The BHA alternative, which would build a two-lane temporary highway and keep the Promenade open, gained significant attention and is now being studied as an option by DOT, the organization said.