Joanna Pressman helps her employer take from the rich and give to the poor, and she does it out in the open, not by skulking around Sherwood Forest. As general counsel of the Robin Hood Foundation, she is a one-woman shop for all the legal work at the highly regarded charity, which fights poverty in New York City.
With the help of a roster of benefactors that reads like a who’s who of the financial, business, and media worlds, Robin Hood last year invested $146 million in more than 200 poverty-fighting programs in New York City. The board pays all staff salaries and other administrative costs, so 100 percent of the donations received go directly to projects that the charity funds.
