At the desk of: Melinda Katz

After 13 years in elected office (first in the state Assembly and then on the City Council’s powerful land use committee), Melinda Katz, 44, is now settling into private-sector life. After her hopes to become city comptroller were dashed in the last election, she joined the law firm Greenberg Traurig, where she’s on the government relations team. But this time she’s on the opposite side of the table, advising developers on land use and zoning issues and lobbying on their behalf, too. This comes after some critics said she favored developers during her tenure on the land use committee, something Katz disputes. But it’s not all politics in her 15th-floor Midtown office. She also pays homage to her much-publicized singing skills, which were cultivated in a musical childhood in Forest Hills, Queens, in the house where she still resides. At the Desk of 026TRD0510