The spotlight will be on Deputy Queens Borough President Rhonda Binda when the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning presents the second installment of JCAL Talks, a speaker series featuring borough-based thought leaders in arts and culture, education and politics, and civic and community life.
The former executive director of the Jamaica Center BID will be the guest on March 31 beginning at 7 p.m. on an hourlong livestream on JCAL’s YouTube and Facebook platforms.
JCAL Talks aims to engage and amplify voices and perspectives of the diverse spectrum of Queens leaders. The inaugural program, launched during Black History Month, featured former Deputy Queens Borough President Melva Miller, currently the CEO of the Association for a Better New York.
“We’re honored to welcome Deputy Queens Borough President Rhonda Binda to JCAL Talks as part of our ‘Community First, Digital First’ season,” Jamaica Center Arts & Learning Interim Executive Director Leonard Jacobs said. “Rhonda’s accomplishments in New York City and Washington, D.C., speak for themselves. What is so exciting is that, given a chance to serve in her hometown, she chose to do so, and now, under the leadership of Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, she is already distinguishing herself as a powerful voice in planning for the post-pandemic Queens.”
Raised in southeast Queens, Binda successfully lobbied the City Council for New York Public Interest Group (NYPIRG) to shut down Fresh Kills, the largest toxic site in the country. As an attorney, she represented and released wrongly detained clients before the U.S. Immigration Court of Appeals after 9/11 pro bono and broke up internet and cable monopolies. In government, she served in both the Obama-Biden and Clinton-Gore administrations as a U.S. diplomat and in the West Wing.
Inspired by the love of her hometown, Binda returned to Queens as the executive director of the Jamaica BID, the borough’s largest business district where she took action against stark inequality of resources and investments made in the borough. Under her leadership, Jamaica rose through the ranks to be named the No. 1 neighborhood in the city, captured top awards from the city’s Department of Small Business Services and ranked first in the state for downtown revitalization, raising Jamaica’s profile as a unique, vibrant multicultural center for retail and tourism.
She continued to serve her community as chairwoman of South Asian American Voice, vice president of the Guyanese Girls Rock Foundation High School Women’s Leadership Academy and on the boards for the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Queens, the New York Hall of Science and Positive Women United.
“For those of us living and working in southeast Queens, Rhonda Binda’s name is linked to a vision of service and positive action,” JCAL Interim Artistic Director Courtney Ffrench said. “She’s not only from our community, she has always been our advocate and our friend. I can’t wait to hear what she’s working on during the JCAL Talks event.”
Binda attended Queens public schools in District 29 and, because of her academic potential, she was recruited to the prestigious Prep for Prep program, which provided her a path to The Lawrenceville School, Duke University, Georgetown University and Oxford University. She is an internationally recognized People’s Choice leader in building smart cities and connected communities. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at Medgar Evers College and served on both 21st-century government and foreign policy teams for the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign.
Binda has traveled to six continents, more than 40 countries and hundreds of cities working with state and local leaders, and she lives in Jamaica Estates.
