Lillian Davis Roberts (born January 2, 1928)[1] served from 2002 through 2014 as the executive director of District Council 37 (DC37), the largest municipal union in New York City.
This began a professional relationship between Gotbaum and Roberts that lasted for decades.
In 1969, she was jailed for two weeks for defying New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and leading a strike against three mental hospitals.
[2] In 1981, after events which decreased her power in DC37, she left the union and was appointed as New York State industrial commissioner, the first black woman to hold such a high post in New York.
From 1987 to 1992, she was senior vice president of Total Health Systems, an HMO.