My name is PJ Kim and I am running for New York City Council to represent District 1, which encompasses all of Lower Manhattan, including: Chinatown, Tribeca, SoHo, Little Italy, Battery Park City, City Hall, the Financial District and parts of the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village.

I live in the Financial District in the Greenwich Street South neighborhood and served for 2 years on Community Board 1 (Lower Manhattan), with assignments on the Quality of Life Committee and the World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee. I see firsthand that our neighborhoods are the fastest growing residential areas in New York City. But I also see that government services and local politics have not kept pace with the speed and direction of these tremendous changes. I’m running because I believe the City Council needs a dose of progressive professionalism.

The residents and businesses of Lower Manhattan are suffering during this economic downturn. I offer new ideas, energy, and leadership to bring our diverse community together to make Lower Manhattan a more livable place for both long-time and new residents.

Leading a planning session for NYC SingleStop.
I will fight to improve access to crucial social services, invest in public education so that we have the best teachers in less crowded classrooms, expand our economic base by focusing on our competitive advantages, protect affordable housing, and ensure that our public transit is world class and adequately funded. I will work hard every day to ensure that government services in Lower Manhattan serve the families in our growing neighborhoods and that City Hall promotes innovative policies so that all New Yorkers can be confident about our shared future.

I am a first generation immigrant from South Korea. My parents and I moved to the US and first lived in Louisiana and Tennessee. My parents were graduate students so they only earned $500 a month for 5 years. We lived in subsidized student housing and I ate free school breakfast and lunch. Even at a young age, I knew our poverty was only temporary because my parents’ education would lead to better opportunities for our family. But I also knew that many of my classmates and friends were not so lucky and faced a less promising future. Personally experiencing income inequality and seeing its limiting effects on human potential was a formative experience that I’ve never forgotten. That’s why I’ve dedicated my professional career to social justice and expanding economic opportunity.

I was fortunate to receive generous financial aid so that I could attend Princeton, where I studied public policy, served as President of the Student Government, and eventually served as a Young Alumni Trustee. After graduation, I moved to New York City and worked at McKinsey as a management consultant, helping to improve the impact of businesses and nonprofit organizations, such as Teach for America, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, and Vote for America.

I left McKinsey to attend Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government to earn a joint MBA/MPA degree. I turned down lucrative job offers and returned to New York to enlist my passion for social justice, experience working in business, and belief in good government, to fight poverty and expand economic opportunity for all New Yorkers.

I have spent the past few years helping to start and lead nonprofit anti-poverty programs that have helped tens of thousands of low income residents in New York City and across the country to access public and private assistance, move out of economic crisis, and begin to build assets.

Our team at FoodChange ran the largest free tax preparation campaign in the US, serving 43,000 low income New Yorkers with over $80 million in refunds.
As Director of Income Policy at FoodChange, now part of the Food Bank of New York, I helped forge innovative partnerships between corporations, labor unions, foundations, community organizations, and local government to deliver tangible results. I led 200 employees and 400 volunteers in 11 locations in all 5 boroughs so that 43,000 low income New Yorkers could stay out of poverty through almost $80 million in annual tax credits, and thousands of enrollments for subsidized health insurance, food stamps, free bank accounts, and free legal and financial counseling. As Vice President of Programs and part of the start-up team at SingleStop USA, I helped replicate this “one-stop-shop” model throughout New York City and in San Francisco, New Mexico, and Newark.

I am proud of my work to help families survive financial crisis and begin to build assets for their future because I believe that inequality of opportunity is a major threat to the future our country. But I realized that it was not enough for me to just address the symptoms of poverty as I began to see more formerly middle and working class New Yorkers needing assistance. And more distressingly, I did not see traditional local New York City politics producing enough innovative ideas or leaders equal to the immediate crisis.

I decided that running as a candidate this year was the best way I could energize the political process, offer new ideas, and create a sense of urgency to focus on the fundamental challenges that will shape New York City’s future. I hope you will join me. Because our new challenges demand new leadership.