Rep. Ritchie Torres (photo: Communications CoroNewYork)
When the next session of the City Council begins in January, multiple seats will be filled by alumni from the Coro New York Leadership Center, a local organization playing a key role bringing new leaders into city government.
The work of the nearly 80-year-old nonprofit leadership institute is also evident given Coro’s representation on Mayor-elect Eric Adams’ transition committee. Coro’s mission consists of training emerging NYC leaders so that “All individuals, communities, and institutions participate in creating an equitable, just, and engaged society” and its new executive director is working to find promising new leaders from historically overlooked communities.
The three Coro alumni in the incoming City Council class are Carmen De La Rosa representing Manhattan’s District 10, Shahana Hanif representing Brooklyn’s District 39, and Kamillah Hanks representing Staten Island’s District 49. They are three women of Color who will be part of the most diverse City Council ever and first with a majority of women. Meanwhile, the mayor-elect’s transition team includes 37 Coro alumni among its hundreds of members
According to Coro’s Executive Director, Adem Bunkeddeko, the prevalence of Coro alums stems from the overlap of the organization’s mission to provide hands-on, inclusive professional leadership training with values New Yorkers are now increasingly looking for in city leaders such as passions for social change, equity, and community building.
“We're seeing a sort-of blossoming in many ways this particular year because I think a lot of the issues, a lot of the challenges are central to the toolkit, the training, the facilitation, and practice that Coro engages with every day in our programming,” said Bunkeddeko, a former senior advisor to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation’s Project 10x, an initiative addressing racial opportunity gaps. “I think that's now even more relevant today than ever…it's exciting and I think it's going to continue to be the case for many years to come.”
Started in San Francisco in 1942 at a time when “leaders feared that democracy as a form of government was under threat by the rise of communism and fascism,” according to the Coro website, the nonpartisan nonprofit was established to train young military veterans for additional public service and provide higher education leadership training. In the decades that followed, Coro grew and created programs in New York City, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh.
Coro’s Fellows Program in Public Affairs is the “cornerstone” of the organization, according to Bunkeddeko. The fellowship offers a full-time, eight-to-nine month program that includes leadership development seminars, five rotational work placements, interviews and seminars with current civic leaders, and weeks where fellows can investigate any topic of their choosing. Every year out of the hundred of applicants, twelve fellows are selected and are eligible for stipends based on financial need to complete the program. Coro also offers five other programs spanning from the Immigrant Civic Leadership Fellowship to the Participatory Budgeting Youth Fellowship.
Council Members-elect De La Rosa, Hanif, and Hanks participated in Coro’s Leadership New York 27 (2016), Immigrant Civic Leadership Program 2017, and Neighborhood Leadership 2013, respectively. Former City Council member and now-U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, who represents New York's 15th congressional district in the Bronx, is also a Coro alum, as is outgoing City Council Member Carlos Menchaca of District 38 in Brooklyn.
Torres is the first openly gay Afro-Latino elected to Congress and Menchaca is New York State’s first Mexican-American elected official and was Brooklyn’s first openly gay elected office-holder, exemplifying Coro’s aim of elevating leaders from “historically excluded coommunities.”
Since becoming Coro New York’s Executive Director earlier this year, Bunkeddeko said he has tried to increase the organization’s scale and funding, as well as find emerging leaders who do not come from “the traditional pipelines.”
“We just think that there is a real opportunity, particularly now, to shape not only New York in a profoundly positive way, but society on the whole as we are trying to grapple with questions around what will our city and state look like after we recover from the pandemic,” said Bunkeddeko. “We believe that this emerging set of leaders are going to be instrumental in helping shape that.”
For Bunkeddeko, the mission to support and include a diverse range of aspiring leaders is a personal one.
“I come from, at least, the group that I'm seeking to elevate,” said Bunkeddeko, who ran twice for Brooklyn’s 9th Congressional District seat in 2018 and 2020. “My parents are war refugees from Uganda. My parents had very little, we managed to eek by, but it is by virtue of opportunities and they're hard work and the hard work of not only myself, but the belief of others helped me to sort of get to a place in life where I can be able to be in this situation where I can help others again realize their full potential.”
Like many other nonprofit groups, Coro’s funding largely comes from various foundations and sponsors. According to its website, Coro receives support from a wide range of public and private entities such as the American Express Foundation, the National Grid Foundation, the New York City Council, the New York City Department of Education, Lyft, the Center for Court Innovation, and the Ford Foundation.
“We have sponsors from other sectors, the private and social sector, who see Coro’s mission in terms of the not only preparing folks to engage civically at a high level, but also the fact that if we're going to move the city forward, we're gonna have to have folks from…all sorts of backgrounds be able to participate in a meaningful way whether that's activists, whether that's movement builders, whether that's folks serving in government, or whether that's folks in the private sector who want to be civically engaged,” said Bunkeddeko.
As Eric Adams prepares to assume the role of mayor on January 1, his current transition team includes over three dozen Coro alumni.
For example, Gregg Bishop, former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Small Business Services, was a participant of Coro’s Leadership New York program in 2009-10, briefly ran Coro New York on an interim basis before it hired Bunkedekko, and is now a member of Adams’ economic & workforce development transition committee. Nanette Smith, an alum from Coro’s Leadership New York 1995-96 program, is one of the leads on Adams’ appointments committee. Candis Tolliver, the Political Director of the local Local 32BJ branch of the Service Employees International Union, is a lead of Adams’ public safety & justice transition committee and completed Coro’s 2017-18 Leadership New York program.
As 2021 marks a significant moment for the organization’s leadership training and New York City government, going forward Bunkeddeko hopes Coro will continue to discover new leaders from underrecognized communities and expand its success from City Hall to Albany.
“I think if we can make public service and just participating in public life attractive to a new generation of New Yorkers and leaders who often have been excluded,” he said, “that is going to have a phenomenal impact in the city and in New York and in society just generally.”
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by Lachlan Hyatt, Gotham Gazette
@GothamGazette
Mayor-elect Adams with 5 Deputy Mayor appointees (photo: @MTorresSpringer)
Eric Adams took office on January 1, 2022 as the 110th Mayor of New York City.
After winning the 2021 election, Adams announced his expansive transition committee and, in mid-December, began filling out his government. Here is a running list of his major appointments and nominations, some made when he was mayor-elect and some in his first weeks as mayor (they are not in chronological order):
Lorraine Grillo, First Deputy Mayor
Anne Williams-Isom, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services
Meera Joshi, Deputy Mayor for Operations
Maria Torres-Springer, Deputy Mayor for Economic and Workforce Development
Sheena Wright, Deputy Mayor for Strategic Initiatives
Philip Banks III, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety
David Banks, Chancellor of New York City Public Schools
Keechant Sewell, Commissioner of the New York Police Department (NYPD)
Brendan R. McGuire, Chief Counsel to the Mayor and City Hall
Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Chief Advisor
Frank Carone, Chief of Staff
Dawn Miller, First Deputy Chief of Staff
Madeline Labadie, Deputy Chief of Staff
Ryan Lynch, Deputy Chief of Staff
Menashe Shapiro, Deputy Chief of Staff
Tiffany Raspberry, Senior Advisor for External Affairs
Stefan Ringel, Senior Advisor to the Mayor
Andrea Shapiro Davis, Senior Advisor for Talent and Appointments
Eric Ulrich, Commissioner of the Department of Buildings (was Senior Advisor to the Mayor, January-May)
Edward Mermelstein, Commissioner, Mayor’s Office of International Affairs
Fred Kriezman, Commissioner, Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit
Roberto Perez, Director for Intergovernmental Affairs
Dan Steinberg, Director, Mayor’s Office of Operations
Rachel Atcheson, Special Assistant to the Mayor
Maxwell Young, Communications Director
Fabien Levy, Press Secretary
José Bayona, Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media
Jacques Jiha will continue to as Director of the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget
Preston Niblack, Commissioner of the Department of Finance
Matthew Fraser, Chief Technology Officer
Melanie La Rocca, Chief Efficiency Officer
Louis Molina, Commissioner of the Department of Correction
Ydanis Rodriguez, Commissioner of the Department of Transportation
"Dr. Dave A. Chokshi will continue to serve as Commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) through March 15 of 2022…Ashwin Vasan, M.D., PhD will then become DOHMH Commissioner in March and will serve as Senior Adviser for Public Health in the interim."
Aloysee Heredia Jarmoszuk will continue as Chair and CEO of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission
Gary Jenkins, Commissioner of the Human Resources Administration & Commissioner of the Department of Social Services
Lisa Fitzpatrick, Administrator of the Human Resources Administration
Joslyn Carter will remain Administrator of the Department of Homeless Services
Dawn Pinnock, Commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services
Sherif Soliman, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Policy and Planning
Lisa Flores, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services
Marjorie Landa, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Risk Management and Compliance
Jess Dannhauser, Commissioner of the Administration for Children's Services
Manny Castro, Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs
Fred Dixon has been reappointed President and CEO of NYC & Company
Kevin Kim, Commissioner of the Department of Small Business Services
Nina Kubota has been reappointed as President and CEO of the School Construction Authority
Dan Garodnick, Chair of the City Planning Commission and Director of the Department of City Planning
Edith Hsu-Chen, Executive Director of the Department of City Planning
Thomas J. Foley, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Design and Construction
Jessica Katz, Chief Housing Officer
Adolfo Carrión Jr., Commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development
Eric Enderlin will continue as President of the Housing Development Corporation
Rohit T. Aggarwala, Chief Climate Officer and Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection
Vincent Sapienza, Chief Operations Officer of the Department of Environmental Protection
Kizzy Charles-Guzman, Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice
Susan Donoghue, Commissioner of the Parks Department
Iris Rodriguez-Rosa, First Deputy Commissioner of the Parks Department
Vilda Vera Mayuga, Commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection
Jose Ortiz, Jr., Senior Advisor for Workforce Development
Jessica Carrano, Director of City Legislative Affairs
Christopher Ellis, Director of State Legislative Affairs
Lisa Lashley, Director of Appointments
Gladys Miranda, Director of Scheduling and Senior Advisor to the Mayor
Molly Schaeffer, Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Emergency Advisor
Renee Campion will continue as Commissioner of the Office of Labor Relations
Zachary Iscol, Commissioner of New York City Emergency Management
Christina Farrell, First Deputy Commissioner of New York City Emergency Management
Andrew Kimball, President and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation
Lindsay Greene, CEO of Brooklyn Navy Yard
Anne del Castillo will continue as Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment
Clare Newman will continues as the President and CEO of Trust for Governor’s Island
Ana M. Bermúdez will continue as Commissioner of the Department of Probation
Deanna Logan, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice
Elizabeth Crotty, Commissioner and Chair of the New York City Business Integrity Commission
Laurie Cumbo, Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs
Cecile Noel will continue as Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence
Abby Jo Sigal, Executive Director of the Mayor’s Office of Talent and Workforce Development
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez will continue as Commissioner of the Department for the Aging
Asim Rehman, Commissioner and Chief Administrative Law Judge of the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings
Dr. Mitchell Katz will continue as President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals (approved by the H+H Board)
Jessica Tisch, Commissioner of the Department of Sanitation
Jason Graham, MD, Chief Medical Examiner
Sideya Sherman, Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Equity
Anthony Miranda, Sheriff of the City of New York
Jocelyn Strauber, Commissioner of the Department of Investigation (approved by the City Council)
Sylvia Hinds-Radix, Corporation Counsel (approved by the City Council)
David Do, Chair and Commissioner of the Taxi and Limousine Commission (needs to be approved by the City Council)
Arva Rice, Interim Chair of The Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB)
NYC Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
December 20, 2021 - Max Politics Podcast: Commissioner Steve Banks on the De Blasio Administration's Social Services Record
Steve Banks, who has led major social services and homelessness efforts under Mayor Bill de Blasio for the entire eight-year administration, joined the show to discuss the reforms he's ushered in and the administration's record on public benefits, homelessness, and more.
Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.