For Bill de Blasio, hiring a City Hall staff was just as much a chance to advertise his progressive crusade in flesh and blood as it was about finding talented deputies. The mayor doesn’t do much quickly, but hiring a team where the mix of races and genders is a priority has been an especially painstaking process. (He still lacks a Buildings commissioner, for instance.) The 14 people flanking the mayor here, though, are the lieutenants he’s counting on to translate his income-inequality rhetoric into working policy.
1. Rachel Noerdlinger
Chief of Staff to the First Lady
Formerly a top aide to the Reverend Al Sharpton.
2. Zach Carter
Corporation Counsel
Ex-prosecutor; settled suit with Central Park Five.
3. Peter Ragone
Senior Adviser
Former Andrew Cuomo aide; media and political strategist.
4. Alicia Glen
Deputy Mayor
Ex–Goldman Sachs executive, working on de Blasio’s affordable-housing plan.
5. Maya Wiley
Counsel to the Mayor
Expanding internet access in low-income neighborhoods; second-tallest member of the administration.
6. Tony Shorris
First Deputy Mayor
Tasked with keeping a close eye on daily government operations like sanitation and hospitals.
7. Carmen Fariña
Schools Chancellor
Former teacher and principal coaxed from retirement to attempt to raise graduation rates and deemphasize testing.
8. Bill Bratton
Police Commissioner
The Giuliani-administration veteran has been asked by de Blasio to keep crime rates low while giving the NYPD a friendlier face.
9. Richard Buery
Deputy Mayor
In charge of rolling out de Blasio’s pre-K and after-school programs; he himself made it from East New York to Harvard and Yale.
10. Lilliam Barrios-Paoli
Deputy Mayor
Former nun serving her fourth mayor—Koch, Giuliani, and Bloomberg—and heading up anti-poverty initiatives.
11. Emma Wolfe
Director of Intergovernmental Affairs
Grassroots labor-union organizer. Now using those talents to advance the mayor’s legislative agenda.
12. Dean Fuleihan
Budget Director
Trying to redirect city dollars from Bloomberg priorities to de Blasio causes.
13. Laura Santucci
Chief of Staff
A key connection to national Dems and liberal donors.
14. Dom Williams
Chief of Staff to the First Deputy Mayor
At 31, the youngest member of the team; was senior policy adviser to de Blasio in the public advocate’s office.
*This article appears in the June 30, 2014 issue of New York Magazine.
