Instructor Biography: David Paterson
HONORABLE DAVID A. PATERSON was the 55th Governor of the State of New York, and the first African American in that role, serving from 2008 to 2010.  He earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1977 and graduated from Hofstra Law School in 1983.  He worked in the Queens district attorney’s office, participated in David Dinkins’s campaign for Manhattan borough president, was elected in 1985 to the NY State Senate seat that was once held by his father, Basil Paterson, and then went on to become Senate Minority Leader.  Selected as a running mate by Eliot Spitzer, he was on the Democratic ticket and elected to the position of lieutenant governor in November 2006, serving in that role until being elevated to governor after Spitzer resigned in the wake of a prostitution scandal.  After abandoning his brief campaign to be a gubernatorial candidate in the 2010 Democratic primary, he worked as a radio talk show host, was appointed as an adjunct professor at NYU and a distinguished professor at Touro College in Harlem, chaired the New York State Democratic Party, and recently joined Stifel, Nicolaus & Company at 3 Bryant Park in Manhattan as Director/Investments with the Moldaver, Paterson, Lee and Chrebet Group, a wealth management team.