Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe today announced the appointment of Adena Long as Borough Commissioner of Staten Island. Adena has over a decade of experience working for Parks, most recently as Principal Strategic Planner. She will succeEd Thomas Paulo, who retired last week after serving as the Borough Commissioner for over 17 years.
"It is an honor to appoint Adena as Commissioner of our city's greenest borough," said Commissioner Benepe. "Like me, she started out her career with Parks as an Urban Park Ranger, and since then she has established a remarkable background in park management and strategic planning for our agency. She is a proven leader with a passion for community outreach and involvement, and I know she will serve her neighbors in Staten Island and their bountiful parks with tremendous dedication and care."
"I'm deeply honored to continue my career as the Staten Island Borough Commissioner and to build upon Commissioner Paulo's impressive legacy of creating and maintaining the best parks in the city, for the people of Staten Island," said Adena Long. "I have been with Parks for over 13 years, and I'm proud to have called Staten Island my home for eight of those years. We have so much to look forward to in our neighborhood parks. As a proud member of the community, I am excited to begin working with my colleagues and staff, our elected officials and community boards, and civic groups and other volunteers to ensure that our parks continue to grow and flourish. Just this weekend the public of Staten Island got its first look at Freshkills Park, which when completed will be the largest park developed in New York City in over 100 years!"
Adena first joined the Parks Department in 1997 and has since advocated for the City's parks in a variety of positions, both in the private and public sectors. Before today's appointment, she served as the Principal Strategic Planner for Parks, a position she took on in February 2010. Her personal commitment to New York City Parks is longstanding. She started her career as an Urban Park Ranger in 1997, where she learned the lay of the city's parkland first hand. In 1999 she was named a Sergeant and Borough Supervisor for the Urban Park Rangers, and by 2000 she was Chief of Staff and Deputy Director of the program.
From 2002 to 2008, Adena served concurrently as Executive Director of the Greenbelt Conservancy and Park Administrator of the Greenbelt, the city's 2,800-acre park in Staten Island and the second-largest park in the city. It was a period of tremendous growth for the flagship park, including the addition of a nature center, a recreation center, the park's first natural area management crew and its first greenway path.
She briefly left the public sector to take on the role as Executive Director of Vision for Staten Island, a not-for-profit organization focused on community visioning and planning, but returned to the Parks Department in 2009 to join the Planning & Parklands division, where she focused on the creation of flagship park master plans, an agency vision plan, and other strategic initiatives. She has been a member of Staten Island's Community Board #1 and Chairwoman of the Board's Rules and Legislative Affairs Committee since 2007, but will step down from that position this week as she begins her work as Borough Commissioner.
Adena received her B.S. in Animal Science from the School of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Connecticut in 1992. While working with the Urban Park Service, she earned her M.S. in Non-Profit Management from the Milano School of Management and Urban Policy at The New School for Social Research in 2000. Adena lives with her husband in the St. George-Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island.
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