leecia eve
It’s just prior to Thanksgiving in November of 2024 and Leecia Eve is in a reflective mood, looking back on the last year, noting that it was indeed a tough one.
The long-serving lawyer, veteran of state and local government, economic development advisor, and current Chair of the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center Board of Directors is speaking via Zoom from her apartment in
New York City.
She’s got family on her mind. And what a family it is.
Leecia’s father, Arthur O. Eve, served as a New York State Assemblyman from 1967 to 2022–longer at the time of his retirement than any other incumbent member–and is a towering figure in economic and educational opportunity and civil rights legislation.
Her mother, Constance Bowles Eve, was a revered educator, founder of Women for Human Rights and Dignity, and recipient of the United Way’s Tocqueville Award in acknowledgment of her outstanding volunteer service in the Western New York community.
“My mother was my best friend,” Leecia says. “She was the rock on which my entire family stood.”
Constance Eve passed away in March of 2024 at 91 years old. Months later, in August, one of Leecia’s brothers was hit in Atlanta by a driver under the influence of drugs and alcohol, resulting in life-threatening injuries that he’s recovering from now. Leecia’s oldest brother–a leader and advocate like their parents for educational and economic opportunity in underserved communities–passed away just two days after she returned home from visiting with her brother in Atlanta.
“So if you hear emotion in my voice and see it on my face,” she says, “it’s because I haven’t fully processed all of these things.”
The emotion is indeed palpable as she discusses her family and how they have shaped her.
The Eve family’s legacy of public service is a through-line in Leecia’s life and career.
“Most people are probably familiar with my dad’s work, broadly defined, but not in terms of the details,” Leecia reflects. “I think by any objective measure, there’s been no greater champion in New York State legislative history for educational and economic opportunities for young people of all races, ethnicities, and backgrounds in the most underserved communities.”
In 1967, during his first term on the New York State Assembly, Arthur Eve authored the legislation that became the New York State Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and Higher Educational Opportunity Program (HEOP). Through the access, academic support, and financial assistance those programs provide, tens of thousands of people across New York State who might not otherwise have had the opportunity or means to do so have attended college and graduate school.
Later, Eve–a vocal advocate for prison reform since witnessing conditions at the state prison in Attica, New York–became a key negotiator following the 1971 Attica Prison uprising.
Leecia recalls with clarity how she understood, at just seven years old, her father’s acceptance of Attica inmates’ request that he and others come to the facility to observe and negotiate: “While I didn’t fully appreciate what was happening, I did internalize that my dad was going to a dangerous place, and he might not come out alive. He knew that, and my mother knew that. But he went.”
A belief that the success of our country and society is defined by how we treat those most in need was a consistent core tenet over the course of Arthur Eve’s career, and Leecia is guided by that same principle.
“What he believed, what he taught us, was that our values are reflected in the way we help our sisters and brothers, not because its in vogue, but because we know that it’s the right thing,” Leecia says. “I’d also say that, from a policy perspective, it’s the smart thing. And it’s one of the things that distinguishes us in Western New York from many other places.”
Like her husband, Constance Bowles Eve was an extraordinarily dedicated public servant.
She was the first Black woman to receive tenure at Erie Community College, North Campus, where she taught English for more than three decades. In 1980, she founded Women for Human Rights and Dignity, a groundbreaking program aimed at building educational and economic support systems to help women affected by poverty and facing incarceration improve their lives. In recognition of that work, in 1998, she received the United Way’s Alexis de Tocqueville Award.
“Those are just a few snippets that reflect the public service commitment of the two most extraordinary public servants I will ever know,” Leecia says. “That’s the legacy that I grew up with, and that’s the legacy that I’ve sought to carry on.”
The Road to Roswell Park
When Pam Jacobs Vogt told a large gathering of Roswell Park staff and board members, “Were it not for Arthur Eve, we would not be here today,” Leecia was deeply touched. She’s known Jacobs Vogt, a philanthropist and founding member of the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation, since childhood.
Leecia became a member of the Roswell Park Board of Directors in 2018. She was appointed Interim Chair by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2023, and Chair in 2024.
“It does feel very much full circle to me,” Leecia says, “that this extraordinary cancer center, which received an exceptional rating from the National Cancer Institute in early 2024, 30 years after my father led the fight to inject roughly a quarter of a billion dollars to help it survive and grow, that I would be the first woman and the first person of color in its history to become Chair of the Board.”
Over the course of her career, Leecia, a graduate of Smith College, Harvard Law, and Harvard JFK School of Government, has worked extensively as an attorney and strategic advisor in both the public and private sectors. Today, she is a strategic advisor to Fortune 500 companies, government entities, and nonprofits across New York State and the country.
Her various endeavors have fed and strengthened each other and informed her view of what effective leadership looks like.
“Sometimes, people who have spent their entire career in the private sector don’t have a full appreciation of the tireless work that public servants do,” she says. “At the same time, my private sector experience is also extraordinarily valuable. I feel really blessed to have had all of these different roles.”
It is the combination of her range of professional experiences and her inherited commitment to public service that have positioned her for success in her role leading Roswell Park’s Board of Directors.
Music, faith, family, friends
With all that she does, one would imagine it might be easy for Leecia Eve to tire when faced with events and philosophies that appear diametrically opposed to the ethos her parents exemplified and nurtured in her. And yet, she is resolute and steadfast in her energy and in her hope.
How?
“Music, my faith, family, friends,” she says.
In fact, there was a time in Leecia’s life when she thought her future might lie in music, which has played an enormous role in her life.
“I’ve played piano since I was five, played violin, and sang,” she explains. As a teenager, she auditioned and was accepted into the New York Summer School for the Arts at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. “I remember this like it was yesterday. We took voice, music theory, and music history lessons and at the end of the summer, all the students collectively performed for relatives and friends.
“The piece that we worked on the whole summer was Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, which remains my favorite piece of music of all time. A record was produced of our performance, and the cover of the album had a picture of the chorus. And there I was–there weren’t many people of color in the chorus–standing right there on stage. That album cover is such a precious possession, and that experience was so profound for me.”
At Smith College, Leecia majored in government and Afro-American studies, but minored in music and continued to take lessons throughout her four years there. In law school and as she launched her prolific career, there wasn’t time for her to continue pursuing music at the level she had been.
Still, it remains a passion.
“It’s not what I’ve done in music–it’s what music has done for me,” she says. “It’s been a calming influence in times of stress. It’s been a powerful and encouraging influence when I needed it. It’s the universal language of love.
“In fact,” she smiles, “I’m about to buy a piano for my apartment here in New York. I love music so much, and I need it as a daily part of my life again.”
Where Leecia turns to music for comfort, she looks to her family for inspiration.
“Whatever I might be facing myself, my problems pale in comparison to what my parents had to deal with,” she says. “My father was born in Liberty City, Florida, and ultimately came to Buffalo because it was a place of opportunity for Black people in the 1950s. And my mother was the daughter of a West Virginia coal miner who died of black lung disease. She graduated from high school at 16, from college at 19, and in her early 20s earned her master’s degree from New York University–all in the 1950s. So you can just imagine what they had to endure and the significance faith, and family, and friends had in helping them not only to survive, but to thrive.
“For me, there’s always a push and pull,” Leecia continues. “Dr. Martin Luther King talked about the moral arc of history, and I think about that, and what my parents went through, and it gives perspective to whatever challenge I may have.