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An alleged racist with no experience of fund management is in charge of the embattled West Harlem Development Corporation’s $56 million endowment, The Post has learned.
Zead Ramadan, 57, managed a cafe in Upper Manhattan and had a business selling sandwiches at coffee stations at Columbia University hospitals before being appointed as executive director of the WHDC in 2020.
This year, he was accused by one colleague of making racist remarks and by two women of harassing and verbally abusing them in a federal lawsuit, which WHDC has denied.
As revealed by The Post, the nonprofit, formed in 2009, has been accused of mismanagement and squandering “a generational opportunity” over the $96 million it has been handed over 15 years by Columbia University to improve the lives of residents in Manhattanville to account for its campus expanding into the area.
No major construction or long-term projects have been started by WHDC. Its assets have dwindled to just over $56 million, housed in an investment account at First Boston, where it earns just over $2 million in interest a year, according to the group’s federal filings.
The interest amount is around the same as the nonprofit awards each year to community groups — staging a music festival and buying turkeys for local residents at Thanksgiving, among other activities — which means the pot isn’t growing.
According to its 2024 federal tax filings, WHDC shelled out $173,000 in “investment management fees,” over the previous year.
Although the exact terms of how the fund can be used have not been disclosed, if WHDC had invested even just its initial check for $17 million from the university into a stock market tracker and left it, then it would be worth some $205 million today, according to trackerin2013dollars.com
Ramadan, who was already on the board of WHDC, was appointed its executive director in 2020, after what board members told The Post was an “exhaustive” cross-country search, employing a consultant at more than $150,000.
Ramadan is one of few salaried workers at the WHDS, earning $147,000 during his first year as executive director in 2021. His salary has since grown to more than $225,000 in 2024, a 53 percent increase, according to tax filings.
“When it came down to it, Ramadan was a good selection and the only candidate who really knew Harlem because he has worked so long in the community,” a current WHDC board member and community activist told The Post.
But not everyone seemed to share that optimism. One board member, who headed up the search committee, resigned immediately after fellow board members and chair Milton Tingling, the powerful New York County Clerk, backed Ramadan for the position, according to sources.
Ramadan and WHDC did not return requests for comment Monday.
Before joining the board of the WHDC, Ramadan already had close ties to Columbia University and Upper Manhattan community.
He had been a member of Manhattan’s Community Board 12 in Harlem for 15 years, according to an online bio. His wife, Rudina Odeh Ramadan, is vice dean for finance and administration at Columbia.
Ramadan — also a member of the Council on American and Islamic Relations (CAIR) in New York — was also a founding board member of a Harlem memorial center for Malcolm X where he operated the X Cafe at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center, founded in 2005.
Ramadan also ran in a Democratic primary for a City Council seat in 2013 in District 7, which represents Washington Heights, Manhattanville and Hudson Heights. He got 3.6 percent of the vote, finishing in seventh place. Current New York City Comptroller Mark Levine won the race.
Born to Palestinian parents, Ramadan moved with his family to Washington Heights from Kuwait in 1971 and lived in a three-bedroom apartment with his parents and seven brothers and sisters.
Both of his parents were illiterate, he told the Columbia student newspaper, and his father worked 18-hour days as a baker on 164th Street to support the family.
Last year, former WHDC board member and employee Vincent Morgan filed a federal suit against WHDC, alleging that Ramadan made antisemitic and racist statements and harassed fellow employees.
Morgan complained to Tingling, the board chair, who dropped the ball, the complaint charges, saying he refused to intervene even after three employees of WHDC complained about Ramadan’s alleged racism.
Court files also reveal allegations that Ramadan harassed and verbally abused some of the women in the office. A longtime female employee asked to change offices in order to move away from Ramadan’s alleged bullying. Another woman, who was pregnant, was fired after she complained about Ramadan’s alleged harassment in 2025, court papers say.
“Unfortunately this is not the first instance of inappropriate or hostile communication I have experienced from Zead,” wrote the accuser, who was a Special Projects Coordinator at WHDC, in an email to board vice chair Armond Adams last year.
“Over the past several months his tone and language have consistently been unprofessional, creating a work environment that feels unsafe, tense and emotionally exhausting.”
WHDC has previously denied all the allegations brought in the federal court filing, but the case continues.
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