Gary & David – Class of 2024
Gary Linnen and David Resnick – Class of 2024 – came away from their Greater NY Partnership with shared learning about leadership styles and a deepened respect for leadership that looks different from their own. Linnen is CEO of PeerForward, a national organization that partners with schools and has guided more than 350,000 students toward higher education. Resnick is a longtime restructuring executive with deep nonprofit Board experience who brings structure, foresight, and operational rigor to complex leadership challenges.
Linnen became PeerForward’s CEO in 2020 and immediately moved his organization to remote work. He had to manage multiple upheavals impacting its students and their families. During his Greater NY Partnership with Resnick, the 2023 affirmative action rulings came down and Linnen needed to address the impact on the students of color in PeerForward’s programs.
"Early leadership decisions were a leap of faith," he says. The Greater NY Partnership provided a useful sounding board for his next steps and gave a window into an alternative approach to leadership.
"David gave me the space to pause, prioritize, and approach challenges with fresh eyes. That’s what I found so uplifting," says Linnen. "I’m not a big agenda person. I process information verbally and in a non-linear way," he says. "But David’s rigor on agendas gave us a North Star. Our conversations could roam all over the place, but we always found our way back to a core issue."
"Gary’s style is very different from mine,” says Resnick. “I come from a background where structure is everything," he says. "But Gary taught me to embrace other approaches. Leaders can be incredibly effective in ways that are nothing like my own."
Linnen encouraged Resnick to attend PeerForward events and visit sites where the organization’s work happens. "Having David in the room— where he could see and feel the impact— made our conversations that much richer," he says.
"Meeting the students Gary serves gave me a much deeper understanding of their challenges and successes. It made our discussions more relevant," Resnick agrees.
Greater NY connects leaders in strategic service to the people of New York City. Linnen and Resnick’s Greater NY Partnership gave them an opportunity to think through different leadership styles and recognize the different leadership modalities that can be leveraged to effectively address New Yorkers’ needs. "Leadership isn’t one-size-fits-all," says Resnick. "It’s about finding what works for the leader and the organization. Seeing the kind of leadership challenges Gary faces and how he navigates them has been educational for me."