Gretchen Dykstra

Gretchen Dykstra (born NY August 22, 1948) was the founding President and CEO of the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum Foundation,[1] Commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs under Mayor Bloomberg,[2] and the founding president of the Times Square Business Improvement District (now the Alliance) throughout the 90s.[3] Trained as a teacher, Dykstra worked at the Rockefeller Foundation, the NYC Charter Revision Commission, and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.[4] She taught English in Wuhan, China from 1979-1981.

Dykstra currently writes full-time. Her first book, Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era, (University of Wisconsin Press, 2017) was a team effort with James P. Leary, pre-eminent folklorist, to re-issue the classic Songs and Ballads of the Shanty Boy (Harvard, 1926), written by her grandfather, Franz Rickaby.[5][6] It includes new material, an introduction by Leary, and a biography written by Dykstra. Her book Civic Pioneers: Local Stories of a Changing America, 1895-1915, was released in the spring of 2019.

References
  1. Robin Pogrebin, Leader of Times Sq. Revival to Head Ground Zero Agency,” The New York Times (8 April 2005) https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/08/nyregion/leader-of-times-sq-revival-to-head-ground-zero-agency.html
  2. Lynda Richardson, “You Can Go Home Again (In a New York Minute), The New York Times (12 March 2002)
  3. Doug Steward, “Times Square Reborn,” Smithsonian 26:1 (Feb 1998) p. 34
  4. 75 Most Influential Women: The Advocates,” Crain’s New York Business (25 March 1996) http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/19960325/SUB/603250705/75-most-influential-women-the-advocates
  5. https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/4884.htm
  6. online review, saying much about Gretchen Dykstra


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