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Lisa Tyson, executive director of the Long Island Progressive Coalition, speaks at a rally outside the Theodore Roosevelt Executive & Legislative Building.

Lisa Tyson, the director of the nonprofit Long Island Progressive Coalition, is just weeks away from her due dateshes expecting a girland days away from the luncheon celebrating her organizations 35th year of fighting for social and human dignity.

Shes got a lot on her plate right now, whether its getting her house ready to accommodate a new baby, or making sure that the LIPCs vitally important fundraiser on March 15 is a success at the Timber Point Country Club in Great River.

But she looks remarkably relaxed for someone whose stated purpose in life is to make things better for future generations, including her own, when the conservative opposition has so much power invested in maintaining the status quoif not in making things worse.

Taking a moment out of her busy schedule to have lunch in Garden City recently, Tyson smiled as she sat back in her chair at Wild Fig mediterranean restaurant.

Ive been doing this for a long time! says the 42-year-old native of Merrick. Im a local girl, she grins.

Tyson found her way to LIPC by looking through the phone book. Shed gone to the Fashion Institute of Technology and majored in fashion marketing and communications when the first Gulf War broke out. That outbreak provoked her to start questioning the government since the conflict was less about global justice and more about oil. Next she went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to enter the urban and environmental studies masters program, where she was often the only woman in her classes.

Back on the Island in 1995, Tyson met her future husband, John, and managed a music club called the Right Track Inn in Freeport. When it was time to move on, Tyson decided that there has to be a Long Island organization I can work for, so I went to the white pages and looked under Long Island something-something to see what would turn up.

And so she came to the LIPC, started part-time as a secretary and got hired as a project coordinator. Shes been the director for 12 years.

Its the best job in the world! she says emphatically. I love it when someone says you cant do something and you do it.

Originally posted here:

Long Island Progressives Celebrate 35 Years of Kicking Ass