Executive suite: Marianne Garvin

Now in its 42nd year, the nonprofit Community Development Corp. has a mission to underpin the stability and sustainability of Long Island's economy. It helps small businesses with loans and homeowners with financial education, grants for energy efficiency and weatherization, and ways to avoid foreclosure. It also provides rental assistance to more than 4,000 households.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo last year appointed Marianne Garvin, CDC's president and chief executive, to the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council; she served as co-chair of its writers group. The council's five-year strategic plan helped win $101 million in state funding for Long Island projects.

How have you changed your strategies at CDC in the new economy?
In the last three years we've been fortunate to receive a lot of the stimulus money, primarily in energy efficiency. So we scaled up our weatherization program and started our Reclaim Long Island Homes program, for the vacant, single-family homes that blight neighborhoods. We hired more staff to counsel homeowners who are in danger of foreclosure. We also made a more concerted effort to develop multifamily rental housing. We have 94 units coming online in Hempstead, 36 in the pipeline for New Cassel, and another 180 in Coram.

How else are you involved with foreclosures?
A very big problem is . . . how they hit minority communities particularly hard. We are trying to be part of the solution by purchasing these homes and vacant properties and rehabbing them. We do foreclosure intervention counseling with homeowners. We partner with a lot of the big [mortgage] servicers to have events where people can come and sit down with their servicer and try to come to a successful conclusion on a modification. We also work very carefully with the family to see if they really can afford the home.

It's been said that rental housing is important for attracting new employers to Long Island. How do you choose the towns to build rentals?
It's not an accident that we focused on Coram. [Brookhaven Town Supervisor] Mark Lesko has his Blight to Light initiative, and that's really smart town planning and programming -- to recognize that there are blighted sites and put a program together -- just for the blighted sites. When you're a developer and you're looking for opportunities to build, you don't tend to go where you're not wanted. You look for signals that municipalities send out.

How do you unwind?
I exercise, go to the gym -- that is a real release for me. To have fun, I like to go dancing with my husband.

Corporate snapshot

Name. Marianne Garvin, president and chief executive, Community Development Corp. of Long Island, with offices in Centereach and Freeport.

What does it do. "We are a regional nonprofit that is a significant force for meeting the needs of people and businesses in order to foster vibrant, equitable and sustainable communities." CDC provides small business loans, homeowner and renter assistance with grants for among other things energy efficiency, financial education, foreclosure counseling, home maintenance workshops.

Employees. 90 full-time, 1 part-time.

Revenues. $71 million