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Silda Wall Spitzer is the current First Lady of New York State and the founder and chair of the board of Children for Children, a non-profit organization that fosters community involvement and social responsibility in young people. She is the wife of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

A native of North Carolina, Wall graduated in 1980 with a B.A., summa cum laude, from Meredith College. She received a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1984.

She married Eliot Spitzer in 1987 and together they have three daughters. In a New York Times article (November 10, 2006) she stated that when her husband decided to pursue his political career, she turned her focus more towards the raising of their children, which allowed her to focus on her work with non-profit organizations.

Silda Wall Spitzer began her legal career with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, specializing in mergers, acquisitions and corporate finance. She then joined The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A. as a member of its International Legal Group. She is a founding co-chair of Project Cicero, the annual New York City book drive building classroom libraries in under-resourced schools and serves as trustee for her children's school. She served on the NY Blue Ribbon Commission on Youth Leadership as well as the board of the Children's Museum of Manhattan from 1995 until January 1999, where she was a member of its executive committee and chaired its program committee. She is the founder and current chair of Children for Children.

Children for Children promotes hands-on youth volunteering and giving programs that teach and instill the value of community involvement and civic engagement in children from across the socio-economic spectrum, beginning at a young age. CFC’s service-learning and giving initiatives are reaching more young people than ever before, with over 25,000 youth engaged in 2006 and a projected goal of over 40,000 in 2007.

• Children for Children official site