September 22, 2025

by Lauren Ferguson

The people you surround yourself with are important. Seek and nurture relationships with mentors. Use peers as sounding boards. Ethics matter. Listen, because there is always something to learn from someone else. Put energy and enthusiasm into your work. Impact comes from incremental change. No one has a roadmap to their future.

These are some of the lessons that Bergen County Commissioner Tracy Zur said she has learned over her career, and the nuggets of advice that she expanded on for 55 first-year and transfer students in Ramapo College of New Jersey’s Leaders in Service program.

Zur met the students for lunch on Ramapo’s Mahwah campus to talk about her background, her path to public service, the work that she does, and steps the students can take to make a difference in their communities.

“I’m so excited for you guys to be here because your presence here speaks to the fact that you get that intuitively, that you understand, that you have a role to play in keeping us in a good direction, and protecting your neighbors, your community,” Zur told the incoming Roadrunners.

Everyone may not run for office, but “everyone can serve in some way, and figuring out how you’re going to do that and how you’re going to create a space where service is part of it, is really meaningful,” she said.

Providing Access to Civic Leaders

The five-day Leaders in Service summer session gave first-year and transfer students the opportunity to get involved with political engagement, leadership, and service projects through Ramapo before their first semester of classes even began. During the academic year, students in the program attend monthly workshops covering topics on civic engagement, leadership development, and skill-building.

Zur spoke with the students during a lunch, also attended by Ramapo President Cindy Jebb. Students also had breakfast with President Jebb, dinner with Ramapo’s Vice President for Government Relations Patrick O’Connor, and an opening banquet where they heard from Mahwah Mayor Jim Wysocki.

“Right off the bat, they get a sense of how important they are to the Ramapo College community and also the Mahwah community,” said Rick Brown, director of the Center for Student Involvement, which oversees the program.

Mahwah Mayor Jim Wysocki addressed students and their families at the opening banquet for Leaders in Service.

Students also attended a panel discussion with civic leaders – some Ramapo alumni – and broke into small groups to hold intimate discussions with each of them. There they learned from Deputy Chief of Staff for the New Jersey Assembly Democratic Office Stephan Lally ‘20, Associate Director of Corporate Relations at Jersey Cares Claudia Wetzel ‘20, Manager of the Ramsey Farmers Market Nancy Boone ‘07, as well as Diana Salameh, executive vice president at Serino Coyne and co-founder of The Broadway Women’s Alliance.

Dylan Heffernan, Ramapo’s assistant director of civic engagement, said exposing students to accessible, experienced civic leaders “humanizes” processes such as the electoral process and gives students “a way of seeing their future in a really tactile way.”

“We want them to feel like they can get there, and our way of doing that is showing them that they [civic leaders] are people too,” Heffernan said.

Remembering the Why 

Zur shared how early in her career she worked for the New Jersey democratic party helping to get candidates elected, as well as for Congressman Bill Pascrell, and left to raise her children and work as a part-time attorney and municipal court judge. She went back to school to pursue her Master’s in Public Administration, and then decided to run for office herself, because “When you’re in office, you actually get to make policy that helps dozens or hundreds or thousands of people,” she said.

The students asked Zur poignant questions such as what her biggest challenge while in office has been and how she moved past it, who has inspired and motivated her, what her largest risk or sacrifice has been, what stories from Bergen County families have fueled her views and advocacy, and what have been her proudest achievements while in office,

Among her proudest achievements, Zur said, are her work to combat food insecurity, helping young people on the autism spectrum secure internships and employment, and forming the county’s LGBTQ Advisory Committee and LGBTQ Youth Leadership Summit to ensure young people have a place to feel like they belong.

When the days get hard, she said, she takes out her “Why I Do This” folder created by her former aid. Among its contents, she said, is a letter from a father whose son she helped get into rehab, a picture of a family eating a meal together because of food sent to the pantry during the pandemic, and a piece of legislation raising the minimum wage.

“They always say that the idealism of youth kind of seeds its way to the cynicism of age. Don’t let it,” Zur told the students. “We need the idealism. We need the outside-the-box thinking. And we need people who are remembering why they are there and what our responsibility to each other is.”

Brianna Benitez ’29, Giana Hernandez ’29 and Amaya Santiago ’29 are part of the Leaders in Service program.

Making an Impact

Accounting major Syeira Palmer ‘29 of Elmwood Park, NJ, who volunteered at a food pantry during high school, said hearing about Zur’s “strive to eliminate food insecurity, that really helped to motivate me to make even more of an impact on my community.”

Palmer said she joined Leaders in Service because she wants to make a difference.

“I really like making an impact where I go, so if I have a chance to lead, I always like to take that chance,” she said.