Alumnus/Alumna of the Month

Martha E. Stark '86

Read an Interview with Martha E. Stark.

New York City Finance Commissioner Martha E. Stark, the first African-American woman to serve in this role, leads a 2300-person agency charged with collecting $18 billion in annual tax revenue, maintaining records for more than one million properties, conducting thousands of tax audits and adjudicating more than two million parking tickets each year. Stark also serves as chair of the New York City Retirement System and the Teachers Retirement System.

Since her appointment on February 11, 2002, Stark has improved the agency's operations in numerous ways, all in an effort to make NYC Department of Finance more efficient, more effective and more customer friendly. Her achievements include reforming the property valuation process, simplifying the property tax billing process, administering a successful business tax amnesty program, administering the $400 property tax rebate, and launching a program to expand banking services in underserved neighborhoods.

Stark's successful tenure to date builds on work she began at NYC Department of Finance in 1990, when she held several senior management positions during the Dinkins Administration. As the Acting Director of the Conciliations Bureau, she established the unit that mediates business tax disputes. As an Assistant Commissioner, Stark managed the team responsible for answering taxpayer questions and led the Department's effort to educate the public and elected officials about the city's complex tax issues. She was also responsible for a comprehensive analysis of the city's real property tax structure.

In 1993, after three years at the NYC Department of Finance, Stark became a White House Fellow, assigned to the U.S. Department of State. She then served as Director and Deputy Counsel for Policy and Development in the Manhattan Borough President's Office, where she formulated policy recommendations in civil rights, health, education, welfare and other areas, oversaw budget and land use issues, and sat on the New York City Employee Retirement System Investment Committee. During this time Stark also consulted on “The Orphaned Capitol,” an influential Brookings Institution study which recommended ways to restore the fiscal health of District of Columbia. Prior to her appointment as Finance Commissioner, Stark was a portfolio manager at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, where she managed millions of dollars in youth development grants.

In 1998, Stark co-authored a study for the New York University School of Law that analyzed the high cost of building and renovating housing in New York City. She has written extensively about the New York City property tax, and has taught budget and finance courses at Hunter College and business law at Baruch College.

She earned her bachelor's and law degrees from New York University, where she captained the varsity basketball team. She lives in Brooklyn, where she grew up and attended public high school.

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