Public Service & Operations Leader
Margarita Lekaj, MBA, is a Public Service Professional and Operations Leader based in Kingston, New York. Her career spans more than 15 years of hands-on experience in public-sector budget management, procurement, fund accounting, and capital project oversight. She came to this work through commercial banking, where she held branch leadership roles at Bank of New York and JPMorgan Chase before making a deliberate move into public service. That transition shaped everything about how she operates: with financial discipline, a clear sense of accountability, and a real commitment to the communities her work affects.
Born and raised in Montenegro, Margarita immigrated to the United States at 23. At the time, she spoke no English, but she learned the language, earned her degrees, built a career, and raised three children–all at once, despite the struggles. That background informs how she leads: steadily, practically, and with a real understanding of what’s at stake for the families that public institutions are meant to serve.
Margarita’s operations leadership draws from years of experience in managing procurement workflows, capital project oversight, and fund accounting across public-sector institutions. She brings the same level of attention to a multi-year planning cycle as she does to a single budget reconciliation.
Her banking background gave her the financial rigor that has served her well in the public sector. At JP Morgan Chase, she was recognized as a Top 10% Branch Manager, overseeing full P&L responsibility across two branches. That kind of accountability doesn’t leave you. She carried it into her public sector roles, and it shows in how she manages resources, evaluates risk, and holds her work to a high standard.
Public service, for Margarita Lekaj, is so much more than just a job title. It’s a deliberate choice she has made over and over again throughout her entire career. She has consistently directed her skills toward institutions that exist to serve families and communities, approaching each role with the same accountability she’d apply anywhere else—maybe more.
As a Purchasing Agent/Coordinator and operations professional, her work spans grants management, procurement, and capital project oversight. She treats public resources carefully, transparently, and with full awareness that someone is counting on it being managed well. That philosophy has been the through-line of her career from the start.
Margarita Lekaj completed her MBA while working full-time and raising three children, earned a 4.0 GPA, and pursued a Certificate in Education at Georgetown University to deepen her knowledge of the field she’d chosen to work in.
These credentials are the result of repeatedly choosing to grow—even when it wasn’t easy. That commitment to continuous learning is as much a part of who she is as the work itself.