Over the past three decades, Betsy Gotbaum has led a distinguished career in New York City’s public and private sectors.
A native New Yorker, Betsy attended Barnard College. She received her B.A. from George Washington University in 1961. After graduation, she moved to Recife, Brazil, where she taught high school English and mastered Spanish and Portuguese. She returned to New York several years later and earned a Master's Degree in Education at Columbia University's Teacher's College.
She began her career in government as an advisor to Mayors John Lindsay and Abraham Beame. In 1970 she moved to the NY Police Foundation, where she served as executive director and purchased life-saving bulletproof vests for every officer in the city. She also ran the National Alliance against Violence, where she created a program with the NYPD and other police departments across the country to protect neighborhoods and schools from handgun violence.
In 1990, Mayor David Dinkins appointed Betsy the first female Commissioner of Parks and Recreation. She became president of The New-York Historical Society in 1994, which she rescued from bankruptcy and re-opened to the public.
When Besty Gotbaum was elected to the Office of Public Advocate in 2001 she received more votes than any other candidate, including those for Mayor and Comptroller. She is only the third woman to be elected to a citywide post in New York City’s history.
Since being elected, Betsy Gotbaum has worked tirelessly to increase access to healthcare, public benefits including food stamps, strengthen child protective and senior services, support affordable housing, and help reform education. After September 11th, she raised $1 million for volunteer ambulance companies whose equipment was destroyed when the World Trade Center collapsed.
She is married to retired labor leader Victor Gotbaum and has one daughter, three grandchildren, four stepchildren, and eight step-grandchildren. Betsy and Victor Gotbaum live on the Upper West Side, New York City.