February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Pierce O’Reilly
The Emerald Isle Immigration Center’s eighth annual Briscoe Awards, named after the first Jewish lord mayor of Dublin, Robert Briscoe, will take place Monday, Jan. 29, at the "21" Club in Manhattan. This year’s awards go to Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, former executive assistant to Gov. Pataki, and Rep. Nita Lowey of Westchester.
Wiesenfeld was born in the Bronx in1958, the son of Holocaust survivors. After graduating from Queens College, he served in the foreign courterintelligence division of the FBI. He also served as an assistant to Rep. Thomas Manton and Queens Borough President Claire Shulman. In January 1995, he became the executive assistant to Pataki. His duties included coordinating the governor’s relations with all civic and ethnic organizations.
Lowey, 63, was elected in 1988 to represent New York’s 18th Congressional District. She has being a champion of federal funding for biomedical research, hospitals, community health centers and preventive health programs since. In the 104th Congress, she was co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Women’s issues. This year, she became the first woman to chair the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and oversee the party’s efforts to regain the House in 2002.
Previous honorees include Barry Lipton, Ted Jacobsen, Moe Biller, Randi Weingartgen, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Rep. Ben Gilman, Mayor Ed Koch and Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
The award honors people of the Jewish faith who have helped Ireland and the Irish immigrants in the United States. This year’s ceremony will take place from 6:30-8:30 p.m. For tickets, call (718) 478-5502 or email ascanlon@eiic.org.
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The Emerald Isle Immigrant Center is a not-for-profit organization that provides services to immigrants in the New York City region.