Welcome Aboard, Lily Gold
Today we welcome aboard our new Development Associate, Lily Gold. Lily is eager to join Village Preservation’s mission of supporting the cultural, historic, and social institutions that have made Greenwich Village a lasting and living landmark.
Lily comes from the small Westchester County hamlet of South Salem, about an hour and a half north of Greenwich Village. Growing up so close to the city, she spent years walking the streets of the Village, admiring its charm and growing to appreciate its cultural significance.
But it was her years spent in Burlington, Vermont that solidified her deep interest in urban studies, city safety, and community cultivation. She graduated from the state’s flagship school, University of Vermont, in May 2023, obtaining a degree in Geography and Community and International Development. Her studies took her deep into an exploration of gentrification, the American housing crisis, and society’s growing need for third places, among other topics that are critical to the country today.
Her senior project focused on the work of the seminal Greenwich Village figure Jane Jacobs and her considerations of what makes a street block, neighborhood, and city vibrant and safe for residents. Lily’s time in Vermont included volunteering with grassroots organizations and supporting neighborhood initiatives which solidified her understanding of the power of individuals joining together to make change. Her involvement with her sorority, Pi Beta Phi, brought Lily into philanthropic work, most notably in supporting the organization’s primary mission of nurturing children’s literacy. She sat on her chapter’s executive board and held multiple roles, including fundraising, event planning, DEI, and membership retention.
Lily comes to Village Preservation after a year with a London-based recruiting agency where she worked with top executives in the life science industry and supported organizations in both niche and business-critical hiring efforts. She is excited to apply her communication and relationship-building skills in a mission-oriented role for an organization that has done so much to better the New York community.
Outside of work, Lily collects vintage clothing, enjoys creative writing, and explores different New York neighborhoods and their offerings, while continuing to build and cultivate her own community. Joining Village Preservation and helping to advance the development needs and fundraising goals of the storied organization, she says, is a great privilege.