Jeffrey H. Lynford is currently the President and CEO of Educational Housing Services, Inc. (EHS), the leading not-for-profit New York City organization that has provided safe and affordable off-campus housing for college students and interns since 1987. Today, EHS works with many academic institutions and corporations to provide housing for over 10,000 students annually.
He also serves as Co-Managing Member of Wellsford Strategic Partners, LLC, a family investment firm, was the co-founder of the Wellsford group of public and private real estate companies, and has provided executive leadership as chairman of three exchange-listed corporations which he has taken public. He has served as an independent director on numerous corporate and non-profit boards, including Equity Residential Properties (NYSE:EQR), the largest residential real estate investment trust, and several open- and closed-end mutual funds sponsored by Cohen & Steers, Inc. (NYSE:CNS), a major investment management firm. Previously, for nearly a decade, he held senior investment banking positions on Wall Street.
Mr. Lynford has held three gubernatorial appointments, currently as Vice Chairman of The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey and formerly as a Director of the Trust for Governors Island, and as a Member of the New York State Council on the Arts. He has also served on the boards of three institutions of higher education: New York University (NYU), NYU Tandon School of Engineering (formerly Polytechnic University), and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Additionally, he is the grantor of the Lynford Family Charitable Trust, which supports many eleemosynary organizations with domestic and international missions. The trust has endowed fellowships at Princeton University, Weill Cornell Medical College, and the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts. He is an emeritus trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, and the Citizens Budget Commission, and was the co-founder of the Institute for Mathematics and Advanced Supercomputing at Polytechnic University, now the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
Mr. Lynford holds three university degrees, including a Master in Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and a Juris Doctor from Fordham University School of Law. He is married to Tondra Lynford, who is a psychotherapist; they are the parents of four children.
Mr. Lynford's biography: condensed version / full version