Commissioner, NYC Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment
2018 John Jay Award Honoree
Julie Jacobs Menin CC’89 is an attorney and civic leader who has more than two decades of experience in the legal, regulatory and public sectors.
She is commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, an agency encompassing the key economic and creative sectors of film, TV, theater, music, advertising, publishing, nightlife, digital content and real estate as it relates to these industries, and also oversees NYC Media, the largest municipal broadcasting entity in the country. Her projects include a five-part women’s initiative to promote equality behind and in front of the camera and on stage, the One Book, One New York and One Film, One New York programs, NYC Film Green and spearheading the negotiations to bring the GRAMMY Awards back to New York City after a 15-year hiatus.
Menin previously was commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, the nation’s largest municipal consumer affairs agency, where she presided over the settlement of the agency’s largest case, launched groundbreaking initiatives to protect consumers and was instrumental in implementing the Paid Sick Leave Law, the Small Business Relief Package and the Living Wage Executive Order. She also launched investigations into nonprofit colleges, fraudulent auto loans, debt collectors and other industries preying on New Yorkers, as well as the city’s first expanded Earned Income Tax initiative.
For nearly two decades prior to that, Menin was a leader in consumer protection. As a small-business owner impacted by 9-11, she founded and ran Wall Street Rising, a nonprofit devoted to promoting and sustaining businesses in lower Manhattan. In 2005, she was elected chairperson for Community Board 1, a position she held for seven years, and during which time she helped build three public schools and numerous parks, and secured $150 million of public funding to construct the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center.
An accomplished attorney and community leader, Menin began her career as a regulatory attorney at Wiley, Rein & Fielding in Washington D.C., where she specialized in consumer protection issues, and was a senior regulatory attorney at Colgate-Palmolive in New York City handling regulatory matters for the agency encompassing DOJ, FTC and consumer litigation.
Menin has received numerous awards recognizing her leadership and has served on the boards of various New York arts and culture institutions. She is currently on the Columbia College Board of Visitors, as well as the boards of Public Service at Harvard College, the Paley Center for Media, and NYC & Company. Menin earned a B.A. magna cum laude, as well as a J.D. at Northwestern. She is an adjunct professor at SIPA, where she teaches a course on the legal role cities play as regulators.
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