FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT www.queenscourier.com april 4, 2013 • THE QUEENS COURIER 33 SPOTLIGHT ON JUSTICE: JUSTICE JOSEPH ZAYAS Administrative Judge of the Queens County Supreme Court BY ANGY ALTAMIRANO aaltamirano@queenscourier.com Growing up in a tough neighborhood Photo Courtesy of in West Harlem, Justice Joseph Zayas never considered a future in the justice system. Fast forward, and today he is Administrative Judge of the Queens County Supreme Court. In January, Zayas was appointed by Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman and Chief Administrative Judge Gail Prudenti as the Administrative Judge for Criminal Term of the Supreme Court in Queens. “I’m humbled by the way that the Lord has blessed me,” said Zayas. “I never had dreams that I could become a lawyer.” The judge, who lives in Little Neck, started in night school and made his way to Fordham University where he began interning for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and others. After deciding to follow law in order to fight for the rights of poor people, Zayas enrolled and graduated magna cum laude from Columbia Law School. “I went from being in a public housing project in a tough neighborhood to going to an Ivy League,” said Zayas. Under the mentoring of Supreme Court Justice Rolando T. Acosta, Zayas served as the principal law clerk at the Harlem Community Justice Center Previously, he had served as Deputy Supervising Judge of Criminal Court in Queens County and as the presiding judge of the Queens Misdemeanor Treatment Center and the Mental Health Recovery Court. Zayas then was appointed as a judge of the Criminal Court of the City of New York by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2003 and later reappointed in 2010. In 2012, he was appointed as a Judge of the Court of Claims by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Maintaining his deep Hispanic roots, Zayas serves on the Advisory Board of the Latino Lawyers Association of Queens County, is the Secretary of the Association of Judges of Hispanic Heritage, and is an active member of the Puerto Rican Bar Association. “We’re always fighting to see that number of Latino judges grow across the state because we all believe in a diverse bench,” said Zayas. “Diversity makes us all better, diversity makes the whole bench better.” For his dedication and commitment to the Latino and legal community in Queens, Zayas was honored by the Latino Lawyers Association and District Attorney Richard Brown in 2008 and 2012 during Hispanic Heritage Month. Zayas hopes to mentor Latino attorneys in the future while enjoying life with his high school sweetheart, three children and grandson. “I’m just taking it one week at a time,” said Zayas. “We’ll see what the good Lord has planned for me later on.” Photo Courtesy of Justice Joseph Zayas Justice Joseph Zayas “I’m humbled by the way that the Lord has blessed me” Justice Joseph Zayas Tech meet on open source BY ANGY ALTAMIRANO aaltamirano@queenscourier.com Members of the tech community got together under the spring sun for the first open source conference in New York City on the rooftop of Hunter’s Point Plaza. Open Tech NYC, organized by the Coalition for Queens, along with 10gen, an open source company, and others, took place on Saturday, March 30. Selling out days before the event, the close to 180 attendees ranged from newcomers in the open source community to those who have been involved for a longer time. Open source refers to software for which the source code is available free of charge to the public, as users or developers, to use, copy, modify, sublicense or distribute in the ways they see fit. The goal of Open Tech NYC was to provide the tech community with information on how open source is driving the NYC tech scene. Examples ranged from locally-grown open source projects to startups and big enterprises that run on open source and new organizations that developed in the Big Apple. “The speakers were really great and we were really fortunate,” said Jukay Hsu, founder of Coalition for Queens. “It’s a great start and something we want to build upon.” Among the speakers were Sumana Harihareswara, engineering community manager for the Wikimedia Foundation, Alan Hudson, director of Shapeways, and Tianhui “Michael” Li, data scientist for Foursquare. “People had really great reactions,” said Justin Dunham, product manager of 10gen and conference Open Tech NYC Presenters and Organizers. organizer. “They had no idea there was so much going on.” According to presenters and organizers, open source is an important element because it enables users to be in a collaborative community and be part Photo Courtesy of David Yang of Coalition for Queens of the technology they are using. “It builds community faster, people can own the software,” said Meghan Gill, director of community marketing for 10gen. “I think we are on the forefront of innovation.”
QC04042013
To see the actual publication please follow the link above