Eleanor's Legacy

Deborah M. Sale is executive vice president for external affairs at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), the world renowned orthopedic and rheumatology specialty hospital in Manhattan. Ms. Sale is a member of the hospital’s senior management team. She serves on the Board of Trustees’ Executive, Governance, Research and Planning Committees. She is responsible for Board development, as well as all outward facing departments of the institution.

Prior to joining HSS, Ms. Sale was chief of staff to New York State Lieutenant Governor Stan Lundine. She was his principal policy advisor and chief executive officer and a member of the senior staff of the Executive Chamber of Governor Mario Cuomo.

Ms Sale served in the Carter Administration as the deputy chairperson and executive director of the Federal Council on the Arts & the Humanities and as a special assistant to Vice President Walter Mondale. She was also an executive at Columbia Pictures in New York, and held positions with the Mayor of New York. In 1971, she directed the Committee of Interns and Residents, the New York union of house staff officers.

Ms. Sale serves on the boards of many civic and cultural organizations. She chairs Public Health Solutions, is secretary of the Community Service Society of New York, and serves as a trustee of Dance Theater Workshop and the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy. She was a senior advisor to the 1992 Clinton/Gore campaign.

A native of Arkansas, Ms. Sale resides on Manhattan’s upper west side with her husband, Ted Striggles.