Gail Aska
Revson Fellow 2002-2003
Program Coordinator and Media Contact
Community Voices Heard (CVH)
Gail Aska is a founding member of Community Voices Heard (CVH), where she is currently the Program Coordinator and a Media Contact. She graduated from William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx and holds a business certification from the Monroe School of Business in the Bronx. Ms. Aska has been Administrative Director at CVH and an original member of the Board or Directors. She is also a former board member of The Hunger Action Network of New York State (HANNYS). She has served on the New York City Board of Education Advisory Board for Special Education and on the Assessment Advisory Board for the Edna McConnell-Clark Foundation. She has received a Leadership for Change Award from the Ford Foundation. Her interests are anti-poverty concerns especially welfare, education, media and communication, and children’s issues. Her prior experiences include work in Data Processing and as an Input-Output Control Supervisor and a Data Entry Supervisor in the corporate world. In the early 1990’s she entered the shelter system with her son. Leaving the shelter system after 16 months to go into permanent housing, Gail began working as a volunteer and leader as part of the “Project Welcome Home” program at the Graham Windham agency. She became a key leader along with other women to spearhead the educational component around welfare reform. It was from this venture that she became vigorously involved in the issues of low-income people. At the same time she was a volunteer leader and media contact for SisterCircle, an organization focused on preparing women for the twenty-first century. As Program Coordinator at CVH, she is directly involved in leadership development of CVH members and is continuously building relationships with labor unions, faith-based organization, and political figures. Ms. Aska lives in Central Harlem with her 20-year-old son who attends Co-op Tech. During her Revson year she studied the intersection of race and economic development, and media studies. She will use these studies to enhance the motivational component of CVH by bringing a historical perspective to current issues, particularly labor issues.
(The Revson Fellow’s biography that appears above was last updated in 2002. Revson Fellows may update their biographies on this site by sending email to: revson@columbia.edu)
The Revson year gave me a chance to see the parallels between the low-income communities I’ve worked in for so many years and a larger world in transition. It gave me an opportunity to explore what it means to work as an urban planner in regions in conflict. Through course work, discussions with faculty and students, directed reading, and the culmination of the year - a meeting with planners from the Balkans - I took a long journey that brought me back to where I started: housing can be a tool to stabilize an area’s economy, promote racial or cultural integration, and maybe even promote peace.
