Rick Ostroff’s first client made monuments. In a profession associated with fleeting alliances, it is a pleasingly solid place to begin. When he founded Ostroff Associates in 1995, the New York State Monument Builders Association gave the new business its starting point. By 2018, the association was still a client. Twenty-three years is a considerable second opinion.
The detail makes his career easier to understand than a list of powerful acquaintances would. A former aide to Governor Mario Cuomo had opened a lobbying practice, certainly. But the business had to survive beyond the opening introduction. Someone had to return the call, understand the problem and remain useful when the next problem arrived. An association of monument builders was an early test of that proposition.
Ostroff has since built a practice spanning economic development, financial services, entertainment, real estate and tax policy. Yet that first relationship remains a useful starting point for the story. Albany produces plenty of occasions for a handshake. Being invited back requires something more durable.
A working education in government
Before he advised clients from outside government, Ostroff worked within it. His positions included legislative coordinator for the New York State Consumer Protection Board, assistant for regional affairs, director of the Environmental Bond Act and assistant for legislative affairs to Cuomo. In the legislative role, he advised the governor on legislation and served as a liaison to the Legislature.
These are different views of the same machinery. Regional affairs brings local concerns into the executive office. Legislative affairs requires attention to what elected representatives will accept. A bond act adds the practical business of implementing a public commitment. Ostroff’s later work would draw on that breadth: clients needed help with government as it operated across offices, rather than as it appeared on an organizational chart.
He also studied economics at the University at Albany. His education and public service kept him close to a city that would remain the center of his working life. Founding a firm there meant building on years spent learning its institutions.
The promise has to survive the meeting
Ask Ostroff about business lessons and he returns to the reliability of a person’s word. In a 2019 conversation, he described trust as essential to productive, lasting professional relationships. The lesson was rooted in his time in and around government. It is a practical concern for anyone whose work depends on people accepting information and commitments offered across a table.
By 2025, his explanation had become more explicit: integrity must be accompanied by preparation. Knowing the policy, its context and the people involved gives a commitment substance. A pleasant conversation can begin a relationship; it cannot supply the missing details of a proposal.
“Keeping your word builds trust”
Rick Ostroff, 2025
There is an unglamorous discipline behind that view. An advocate has to arrive informed, recognize competing priorities and leave other people able to rely on what was said. It puts a limit on the usefulness of charm. Charm can get through a meeting without doing the reading. A continuing relationship tends to notice.
Two Ostroffs, different experience
Diana Ostroff joined the firm in 2010. Now its chief operating officer, she brought a career representing business interests, including work at the Albany-Colonie Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Life Insurance Council of New York. Rick’s experience inside the executive branch met a colleague accustomed to explaining what public decisions meant for businesses.
They are also husband and wife. Their shared professional recognition has included the Albany Power 100 and the Albany Business Review’s 2025 Power 50 Duos list. Those paired appearances reflect a practice with two visible leaders, each bringing a different route into government relations.
In 2019, Diana described a client list stretching from large companies to the association representing monument makers. She also explained how business could follow demonstrated competence: companies looked at which other companies a firm represented. The referral depended on evidence that the team could handle comparable problems. Rick’s single-client beginning had developed into a business whose existing work helped make the case for its next engagement.
The work behind a lobbying number
New York’s preliminary 2024 lobbying data recorded $9,191,134 in compensation for Ostroff Associates. The same table listed 161 contractual clients and 164 beneficial clients. Those are separately reported categories, rather than numbers to add together to produce a simple customer count. They describe an established practice with many concurrent obligations.
Firm-level figures from New York’s preliminary 2024 lobbying report. Compensation is money reported for lobbying services; it is not Rick Ostroff’s personal income or wealth.
For the client, the work can be surprisingly specific. Rochester’s December 2019 authorization for state lobbying services named Ostroff as the firm’s president and CEO and set out a proposed annual maximum of $62,500. The assignment included explaining the city’s legislative proposals, reviewing bills, assessing the state budget’s effect on Rochester and arranging meetings between state and city officials.
The city had previously used the firm primarily for ROC the Riverway and other capital priorities. The new arrangement would make it the city’s sole state lobbyist. Here was a public-sector version of being asked back: an existing engagement becoming a broader responsibility. The duties were patient and procedural, with a budget review as much a part of the job as a conversation with an elected official.
A list of those tasks lacks the sparkle of a photograph outside the Capitol. It also explains why an organization might pay for continuity. Bills change, budgets move and a city’s priorities need to remain legible to the state.
Teaching both sides of the table
Ostroff’s firm has represented companies whose products develop faster than the rules governing them. In 2019, its account of technology advocacy pointed to electric vehicles, e-scooters and online services as examples of businesses encountering laws designed for earlier circumstances. New products created questions for agencies as well as opportunities for companies.
The firm described an obligation to explain the innovation to regulators while helping clients understand the constraints those regulators faced. That is a revealing description of the work: useful advice travels in both directions. A client needs to understand the institution it hopes to persuade.
Building that capacity has meant hiring people with different kinds of experience. A January 2022 round of appointments brought in backgrounds in tax administration, school-board and retail advocacy, and state budgeting. Ostroff emphasized both a willingness to learn and the additional capacity the hires would give the firm. His role as founder had come to include assembling people who could see a problem from several professional angles.
The same thinking appeared in his 2025 assessment of the year’s accomplishments. Alongside funding for Albany organizations, he singled out the addition of procurement adviser Ruth Walters. Government purchasing is its own demanding field. Adding someone who understood large public contracts strengthened the team’s ability to help clients through that process.
In January 2026, recognition for Rick and Diana also drew attention to the firm’s work on legislation concerning entry into the accounting profession. The example sits comfortably beside its technology work: an established set of professional rules had become a subject for negotiation and revision. It involved lawmakers and an understanding of the profession’s concerns. For a founder, such an assignment also demonstrates why the team matters. Public recognition may put two leaders’ names together, but the underlying work requires people who can follow the particular issue through its details.
Albany, beyond the office
Ostroff’s connection to the Capital Region predates his business. A lifelong resident, he has spoken about growing up with parents who were small-business owners in Albany. In describing what he values about the area, he has emphasized volunteers and the generosity of people working through local organizations.
One sustained commitment is the South End Children’s Café. His firm has supported it with staff mentoring, financial help for a chef and advocacy for public funding. It is a combination of direct participation and the professional work he knows how to do. The café offers children meals, tutoring and enrichment activities; the support reaches well beyond a ceremonial visit.
His local ties also include the Albany Black Chamber of Commerce board and the UAlbany Athletics Board. A few personal details soften the formal résumé: he married Diana in Greece in 2018, enjoys country music and has described buying a first edition of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast at Shakespeare and Company in Paris. There is room, apparently, for both policy documents and better holiday reading.
Still finding reasons to return
In September 2026, City & State’s Hall of Fame profile highlighted Ostroff’s work on Albany investment and New York’s film-production incentives. It credited his firm with helping secure $400 million for the Championing Albany’s Potential Initiative, including changes to the State Museum and downtown revitalization. The same profile described advocacy for Steiner Studios and production tax credits.
That range brings the story back to the founder’s working geography: an Albany business owner helping clients whose interests stretch across New York. The firm opened a Washington office in 2024, extending its reach while retaining its Capital Region base.
Ostroff’s career began in public institutions and continued through a private practice built one engagement at a time. The monument builders make an apt opening chapter because they give that otherwise abstract progress a human scale. One organization chose him. Years later, it was still choosing him. For a business built on promises about tomorrow, that is a useful record of yesterday.