Board of Trustees

Abraham M. Lackman
President
Commission on Independent Colleges & Universities
Albany, New York

Abraham M. Lackman, the sixth President of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities (cIcu), assumed that position on November 1, 2002, following his selection by cIcu’s Board of Trustees. As cIcu’s President, Mr. Lackman is responsible for leading and coordinating the state and federal public policy advocacy of more than 100 college presidents of New York State’s private, non-profit, independent institutions of higher education and for carrying out the policy directives of cIcu’s Board of Trustees.

Since January 1995, Mr. Lackman had been Secretary of the New York State Senate Finance Committee, where his responsibilities included evaluation of the fiscal and budgetary implications of all major state legislation. Concurrently, he was a special advisor to the Senate’s Majority Leader, Joseph L. Bruno. In the preceding year he served as Budget Director of the City of New York under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. For ten years, 1984-93, he had been the Senate Finance Committee’s Director of Fiscal Studies. Earlier, he was for four years a legislative analyst for the Committee.

Mr. Lackman serves on a number of national, state and community boards and committees. Most recently, he was elected chair of NAICUSE, the umbrella group for state executives of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. On the state level he was appointed to the New York State Commission on Higher Education.  He was also appointed by Governor George Pataki to serve as a member of the Public Authority Governance Advisory Committee and by Chief Judge Judith Kaye to the Special Commission on the Future of the New York State Courts. In addition, he is on the boards of the New York Academy of Sciences, Northeast Health Systems, Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), Instructional Systems, Inc (ISI),  and the Albany-Colonie Regional Chamber of Commerce.  Previously, he has been a board member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Albany Airport Authority and the New York State Deferred Compensation Board. He co-authored chapters in Principles of a High Quality State Revenue System  (published by the National Conference of State Legislatures) and in A Guide to New York State Government (published by the League of Women Voters of New York State).

In the field of higher education, Mr. Lackman is an expert and frequent speaker on the topics of higher education access and economic development. He has been a guest lecturer at Albany Law School as well as New York University’s School of Law, and an adjunct instructor in economics in the MBA program at the Graduate School of Business of the State University of New York at Albany (UAlbany). He earned a bachelor of science degree at New York University and a master’s degree in economics at UAlbany, where he completed course work for a doctorate in economics.

Mr. Lackman and his wife, the former Jeanne Alice Dovico, are residents of the Albany suburb Slingerlands. They have two sons, Jonathan and Aaron. Mr. Lackman is grandfather to Lola and Lucy.