Phyllis Hill Slater, Long Island engineering and architectural firm owner, dies at 80

She was "LI’s leading small business executive," Newsday wrote of Phyllis Hill Slater in 1996. Even today, there seems little room for dispute.

Owner of the Great Neck engineering and architectural firm Hill Slater Inc., she served as president of the National Association of Women Business Owners, after having co-founded its Long Island chapter. She chaired the Long Island Development Corp. and the New York State Association of Black Women Owned Enterprises. And she was a board member or officer of a variety of organizations, including the Long Island Museum of Science and Technology, Northwell Health, SUNY Stony Brook Foundation and Women Economic Developers of Long Island.

Working with U.S. presidents since Jimmy Carter, Hill Slater served as a delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business, testified at House and Senate hearings, spoke about small business nationwide on behalf of the Republican National Committee and other groups, and pushed for the Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan to help give female entrepreneurs a more level playing field.

"I met Phyllis at the White House 28 years ago," said her friend Loula Loi Alafoyiannis, founder of the Euro American Women's Council, for which Hill Slater would become global chair. The two traveled the world together, not only to help foster international opportunities for women’s businesses but also for personal causes.

"We helped a lot of women with breast cancer, because I had breast cancer and she did, too," Alafoyiannis said. "And helping children was her passion. We brought children with cancer from Greece to the United States" for treatment in American hospitals.

"She was very down-to-earth and had good common sense about things," said colleague Esther Fortunoff-Greene, of the Fortunoff jewelry family. When the two met around 1990, they were "among the only females on the board of the Long Island Association," Fortunoff-Greene said. "She was the head of its Small Business Committee, and we were both women who were civically engaged with Long Island businesses and activities and women's issues."

Hill Slater, who lived on Long Island’s North Fork after many years in Floral Park, died May 3 at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset at the age of 80, of what her family called "a sudden event" with her health.

Her accomplishments never overshadowed or intimidated her three children, said daughter Gina Slater Parker, also of the North Fork. "She was always there for my sisters and me," Slater Parker said. "She was a class mother. She was a volunteer for Girl Scouts, an escort on class trips. She took us to swimming lessons — we all learned to swim on Bar Beach on the North Shore."

As the matriarch of what granddaughter Amber Ashley Parker called "a multigenerational household," Hill Slater "was another parent to me. She was highly involved. She did everything beyond the best when it came to me and my cousins," ensuring they were educated at such private schools as Buckley Country Day School in Roslyn and Friends Academy in Locust Valley.

Born Oct. 16, 1944, in Queens, she was the second of five children of Philbert D. Hill — a member of the Army during World War II and later a professional engineer who co-founded Hills, Jenkins, Gaudy Associates — and Yvonne Antoinette Redding Hill, a part-time teacher. Phyllis Hill attended the now-defunct Andrew Jackson High School in Cambria Heights, Queens, and in 1963 married Gordon Haskell Slater, with whom she would have three daughters. The marriage ended in the mid-1970s.

Joining the family business, which evolved into Hill Slater Inc. following the 1984 death of her father, Hill Slater found herself pressed not only against "the glass ceiling" confounding many professional women "but the concrete ceiling," said her daughter. "For Black women it’s a double whammy, because they’re dealing with systemic racism in banking and lack of equal access to procurement opportunities. And that's something Mother worked on with [then] Gov. Mario Cuomo," who in 1988 established the Office (now Division) of Minority and Women's Business Development.

In addition to Gina Slater Parker, Hill Slater is survived by her daughter Tanya Slater Lowe, of Maryland; two siblings; three grandchildren, including Amber Ashley Parker; and two great-grandchildren. Two siblings, her daughter Lisa Slater Williams, and a grandson died before her.

Visitation was held May 12 at Donohue Cecere Funeral Directors in Westbury. Following a private celebration of life at Westbury Manor on May 13, Hill Slater was buried at the Westbury Friends Cemetery.