Queens College alumna Andrea Shapiro Davis, on a return visit to her alma mater, displays the student newspaper that announced her election as the first-ever female president of the student body<\/strong><\/p>\nYou wouldn\u2019t expect Andrea Shapiro Davis, the first-ever female president of the QC student body, a lawyer who now serves in Mayor Michael Bloomberg\u2019s administration, to tell the following story.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a shy, quiet, insecure, overweight little girl and no one wanted to be my friend. I was in fourth grade and this girl Judy had a birthday party and she invited the whole class except for me. I couldn\u2019t believe it. So I asked her why, and Judy said, \u2018I don\u2019t have enough chairs for the whole class\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that moment of rejection, Davis vowed that she would never leave anybody out in whatever path she chose. It is fair to say that not only has she kept her promise to herself, but has also surpassed her own expectations.<\/p>\n
And she credits Queens College for making her the person she is today. \u201cQueens College changed my life,\u201d says Davis. Although she admits that in high school she started to come out of her shell, it was at Queens that she found the confidence to be the person she was meant to be. As president, she was awarded the Chaney Goodman Schwerner Civil Rights Award.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt Queens College I learned how to ask questions\u2014that there is no such thing as a stupid question. It was here that I become involved in student government, and where I was taught by some of the finest professors around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davis names quite a few mentors, including Dave Fields \u201972, Special Counsel to the CUNY Chancellor, Nathan Leventhal \u201963, a member of the QC Foundation Board of Directors and Chairman of the Mayor\u2019s Committee on Appointments, and Political Science Department Chair Patricia Rachal. \u201cShe pushed me and challenged me. I didn\u2019t think that I could work that hard. And what I remember, too, was that my professors weren\u2019t just the people in front of the class\u2014they gave of themselves and were genuinely interested in seeing us succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the head of the city\u2019s in-house Executive Search Firm, she identifies qualified candidates for commissioner and deputy positions, as well as board members for the city\u2019s over 200 boards and commissions. \u201cWhen I interviewed for this job, I mentioned that I had seven filled rolodexes.\u201d<\/p>\n
And you can bet that Davis makes it her business to keep in touch with the people in all of them, which brings us to her advice to students who wish to pursue a career in public service: \u201cStart networking now. See how you can give back to your community in new ways. Talk to your professors\u2014take advantage of their knowledge and get summer internships. Put yourself out there and you\u2019ll achieve things that you didn\u2019t think were possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Favorite Book:<\/b> Pride and Prejudice<\/i> and everything else written by Jane Austen. She thinks everyone should read Robert\u2019s Rules of Order<\/i> by Henry M. Robert and all the works of Maya Angelou, including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.<\/i><\/p>\n
Favorite Music:<\/b> Show tunes and musicals, including A Chorus Line<\/i>, Pippin<\/i>, Funny Girl,<\/i> and all the rest.<\/p>\n
Surprising Fact: <\/b>Her mother started at Queens College in 1952, before Andrea was born. She stopped to raise and support her family, but continued her education at Queens College many years later and graduated in 1986, five years after her daughter.<\/p>\n
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Name: Andrea Shapiro DavisMajor: Political ScienceGraduation Year: 1981Company: New York City Mayor\u2019s OfficeTitle: Special Advisor to the Mayor for Executive Searches and Executive Director of the Mayor\u2019s Committee on Appointments “My professors weren\u2019t just the people in front of the class\u2014they gave of themselves and were genuinely interested in seeing us succeed.”- Andrea Shapiro Davis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"page_category":[],"wf_page_folders":[164,137],"class_list":["post-943","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3024,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/943\/revisions\/3024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"page_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/page_category?post=943"},{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qc.cuny.edu\/communications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}