First elected to the New York State Senate in a Special Election in February 2002, Liz Krueger is currently the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee. She is also a member of three other committees: Housing, Construction and Community Development; Budget and Revenue; and Rules. Sen. Krueger is a strong advocate for tenants’ rights, affordable housing, improved access to health care and prescription drug coverage, social services, more equitable funding for public education, and animal welfare. She has made reforming and modernizing New York State’s governmental processes, electoral system, and tax policy central goals of her legislative agenda. Sen. Krueger is a founding co-chair of the New York State Bipartisan Legislative Pro-Choice Caucus and has led on women's health and reproductive choice since her first term in the Senate when she was a leader in the successful fight to pass the Women’s Health and Wellness Act. Sen. Krueger’s legislative initiatives include protecting and expanding affordable housing for New Yorkers, protecting New York's environment and public health from threats such as hydraulic fracturing for natural gas ("hydrofracking"), and expanding access to food stamps and safety net assistance for needy families and individuals. Sen. Krueger has dedicated her career to issues relating to poverty, and she is a nationally recognized expert on the problems of hunger, homelessness, and the lack of affordable housing, healthcare, and job training. Sen. Krueger has served as Chair of the New York City Food Stamp Task Force; Co-Facilitator of the New York City Welfare Reform Network; on the board of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court; and as a board member of the NYC Federal Emergency Management Agency Emergency Food and Shelter Program administered by the United Way of Greater New York. Prior to her election to the Senate, Sen. Krueger worked for 15 years as Associate Director of the Community Food Resource Center (CFRC), where she was responsible for directing its efforts to expand access to government programs for low-income New Yorkers. She helped monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of federal and state programs in New York City, identifying barriers to participation, and fighting for improvements in the effectiveness of these programs. Prior to her work with CFRC, Sen. Krueger was the founding Director of the New York City Food Bank, building that organization into one that now serves over 1,100 emergency food programs, senior centers, day-care centers, and other community-based programs serving an estimated 5.4 million meals each year. A graduate of Northwestern University with a Bachelors's degree in Social Policy and Human Development, Senator Krueger also holds a Masters's degree from the University of Chicago’s Harris Graduate School of Public Policy. Senator Krueger lives on the East Side of Manhattan with her husband, Dr. John E. Seley, a professor of Urban Planning and Geography at the CUNY Graduate Center and Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs.