Nnenna Lynch: NYRR’s New Chair of the Board of Directors
New Chair of the Board of Directors Nnenna Lynch with Chair Emeritus George Hirsch at the 2022 Mastercard New York Mini 10K.
Starting July 1, Nnenna Lynch will become NYRR’s new Chair of the Board of Directors. She has served on the NYRR Board of Directors since 2014 and for many years served as Chair of the Community Impact Committee.
The board voted unanimously to elect Nnenna as Chair. The organization is thrilled to welcome her and has enthusiastically embraced her election.
Nnenna with a Run for the Future participant and an alum.
She succeeds George Hirsch, whose title is now Chair Emeritus.
“Nnenna is ideally suited to be our next Chair,” said Hirsch. “She is a lifelong runner and a national collegiate champion who over the past 10 years has dedicated herself to our youth and community programs. She and I have worked closely over the years, and I am thrilled to be passing the torch on to her. Under her and Rob’s leadership, the future could not be brighter for NYRR."
Rob Simmelkjaer, NYRR’s CEO, gives high praise: “I’m very much looking forward to working with Nnenna as our new Board Chair. Her vision, passion, and experience with the organization and as a public servant in New York City will be tremendous assets to me and NYRR’s senior leadership team as we chart the future course of this iconic organization.”
Nnenna served two terms as Chair of NYRR's Youth and Community Service Committee (which is now the Community Impact Committee), helping develop the next generation of runners and increase access to running and walking for communities throughout New York City. During her tenure, NYRR was able to expand the breadth of its programming by launching the Rising New York Road Runners program, which currently serves over 112,000 children and youth nationwide (50,000 of them in NYC), providing more young people with the ability, motivation, and confidence to be physically active for life.
Other significant programs have grown or started during her tenure, including Open Run, which started in 2015 and has expanded to 16 sites across NYC and in New Jersey. NYRR Striders started in 2010 and has grown to serve 17 sites across the five boroughs, providing fitness and walking programs to older adults.
Nnenna is a born-and-raised New Yorker and has a long history with NYRR, having run her first race in 1981 at age 10. She went on to run in college and then professionally, and for the last couple of decades has been a recreational runner.
Nnenna (right) running in her youth.
She has completed dozens of NYRR races over the years and recently she was a running buddy for an NYRR Run for the Future participant who was running her first 5K race at the Mastercard® New York Mini 10K.
Nnenna is the Founder and CEO of Xylem Projects, a mission-driven real estate development company focused on high-impact residential, urban residential, and mixed-use projects. She has been passionate about revitalizing neighborhoods and creating thriving communities since growing up seeing the urban blight of the 1980s.
Nnenna is the first woman and the first African American Chair of NYRR’s Board of Directors. At NYRR, we are advancing our commitment to a more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and socially responsible culture and building toward and sustaining a culture and operating model that reflect our values. Learn more about NYRR’s DEIS initiatives and framework here.
A full listing of NYRR’s Board of Directors can be found here.