RPA is delighted to present the 2020 John Zuccotti Award to The Honorable Henry Cisneros, a visionary and transformative leader in community-building and affordable housing. He has spent his illustrious career working across all levels of government to make the dream of homeownership a reality for millions of Americans. At a time when healthy, decent affordable housing is out of reach for so many residents of the region, we are excited to honor and celebrate Henry Cisneros’ leadership. Mr. Cisneros will be joined by PBS NewsHour Anchor and Managing Editor Judy Woodruff for an interview focused on the type of leadership needed from the local to national level. The award will be presented by Howard Milstein, a close friend and colleague of John Zuccotti.

Mr. Cisneros’ community-building career began at the local level. After serving three terms as a City Councilmember, in 1981, Mr. Cisneros became the first Hispanic-American mayor of a major U.S. city, San Antonio, Texas. During his four terms as Mayor, he helped rebuild the city’s economic base and spurred the creation of jobs through massive infrastructure and downtown improvements.

From 1992 to 1997 Mr. Cisneros served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton. As a member of President Clinton’s Cabinet, Secretary Cisneros initiated the revitalization of many of the nation’s public housing developments and formulated policies which contributed to achieving the nation’s highest ever homeownership rate. In his role as the President’s chief representative to the nation’s cities, Mr. Cisneros personally worked in more than 200 U.S. cities in every one of the 50 states.

After leaving HUD in 1997, he served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Univision Communications and currently serves on Univision’s Board of Directors. Mr. Cisneros has served as President of the National League of Cities, as Deputy Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and as National Chairman of the After-School All-Stars

Mr. Cisneros is currently chairman and co-chief investment officer of American Triple I Partners, a developer and manager of infrastructure assets based in New York.

Henry Cisneros is the Principal of Siebert, Cisneros, Shank & Co., and the Chairman of the CityView companies, which work with the nation’s leading homebuilders to create homes priced within the range of average families.

Broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff is the anchor and managing editor of the PBS NewsHour. She has covered politics and other news for five decades at NBC, CNN and PBS.

At PBS from 1983 to 1993, she was the chief Washington correspondent for the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. From 1984 – 1990, she also anchored PBS’ award-winning documentary series, ​“Frontline with Judy Woodruff.” Moving to CNN in 1993, she served as anchor and senior correspondent for 12 years; among other duties, she anchored the weekday program ​“Inside Politics.” She returned to the NewsHour in 2007, and in 2013, she and the late Gwen Ifill were named the first two women to co-anchor a national news broadcast. After Ifill’s death, Woodruff was named sole anchor.

In 2011, Judy was the anchor and reporter for the PBS documentary ​“Nancy Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.” And in 2007, she completed an extensive project on the views of young Americans, titled ​“Generation Next: Speak Up. Be Heard.” Two hour-long documentaries aired on PBS, along with a series of reports on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, NPR, in USA Today and on Yahoo News.

From 2006 – 2013, Judy anchored a monthly program for Bloomberg Television, ​“Conversations with Judy Woodruff.” In 2006, she was a visiting professor at Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. In 2005, she was a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

At NBC News, Woodruff was White House correspondent from 1977 to 1982. For one year after that she served as NBC’s Today Show chief Washington correspondent. She wrote the book, This is Judy Woodruff at the White House, published in 1982 by Addison-Wesley. Her reporting career began in Atlanta, Georgia, where she covered state and local government.

Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in journalism and communication industries worldwide. She serves on the boards of trustee of the Freedom Forum, The Duke Endowment and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and is a director of Public Radio International and the National Association to End Homelessness. She is a former member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a former director of the National Museum of American History and a former trustee of the Urban Institute.

Judy is a graduate of Duke University, where she is a trustee emerita.

She is the recent recipient of the Radcliffe Medal, the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism, the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism from Arizona State University. She received the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Television from Washington State University, the Gaylord Prize for Excellence in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Oklahoma and the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media from the University of South Dakota. She was inducted into the Georgia Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and received the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association and the Duke Distinguished Alumni Award, among others.

She is the recipient of more than 25 honorary degrees.

Judy lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, journalist Al Hunt, and they are the parents of three children: Jeffrey, Benjamin and Lauren.

RPA’s highest award for leadership in the metropolitan region is named after John E. Zuccotti, a long-serving member of the RPA Board of Directors and Execu­tive Committee. Presented each year at RPA’s annual Assembly, the award recognizes a leader who has made extraordinary contributions to the built environment of the tri-state metropolitan region. The 2017 inau­gural John Zuccotti Award was presented to former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. The 2018 Award was bestowed to Anthony Coscia, Chairman of Amtrak. The 2019 Award was given to Alicia Glen, Former Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development, New York City and Founder, women.nyc.