NYC Deputy Mayors Under Mayor Mamdani: Names and Portfolios

The deputy mayors serving under New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani are Dean Fuleihan as First Deputy Mayor, Leila Bozorg for Housing and Planning, Julie Su for Economic Justice, Julia Kerson for Operations, Helen Arteaga Landaverde for Health and Human Services, and Renita Francois for Community Safety. Mamdani, who took office on January 1, 2026, cut the number of deputy mayor slots from the seven his predecessor Eric Adams used and rebuilt the portfolios around housing, economic equity, and community-led public safety.

What a Deputy Mayor Does

The New York City Charter lets the mayor appoint “one or more deputy mayors” and assign them whatever duties the mayor chooses.¹ The count and the portfolios are set by executive order, which is why they shift from one administration to the next. Deputy mayors run weekly meetings with agency commissioners, drive the mayor’s priorities through the bureaucracy, and handle the flow of day-to-day decisions that would otherwise land on the mayor’s desk.²

Mamdani signed Executive Order 02 on his first day, establishing five deputy mayor posts: First Deputy Mayor, Housing and Planning, Economic Justice, Operations, and Health and Human Services.³ The Adams-era slots for Strategic Initiatives, Public Safety, and Communications were dropped, the housing role was narrowed from “Housing, Economic Development and Workforce” to “Housing and Planning,” and Economic Justice was created from scratch.⁴ A sixth deputy-mayor-level position for Community Safety was added in March 2026 through a separate executive order that also created the Office of Community Safety.⁵

Dean Fuleihan, First Deputy Mayor

Fuleihan, 74, was Mamdani’s first major hire, announced on November 10, 2025.⁶ He served as Bill de Blasio’s budget director from 2014 to 2018, helping implement universal pre-K, and then as de Blasio’s first deputy mayor from 2018 to 2021. Before City Hall, he spent years in the State Assembly as a senior staff negotiator on the state budget.⁷

Under Executive Order 02, the first deputy mayor’s portfolio includes the Office of Management and Budget, the NYPD, the Office of Labor Relations, New York City Public Schools, the Department of Correction, and the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, among other agencies.³ Fuleihan’s early focus has been fiscal management. At the May 2026 executive budget presentation, he announced the administration had restored two permanent reserves — the Rainy Day Fund and the Retiree Health Benefit Trust Fund — and outlined a plan to rebuild the general reserve to more than $1 billion by fiscal year 2028.⁸ He has also served as the administration’s point person on childcare spending, confirming during May 2026 provider visits that the executive budget includes $40 million to address pay shortfalls for early childhood educators.⁹

Leila Bozorg, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning

Bozorg’s appointment was announced on December 19, 2025.¹⁰ She held multiple roles at the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development from 2014 to 2020, including chief of staff to the commissioner and deputy commissioner for neighborhood strategies, and spent four years at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama administration. Under Adams she served as executive director of housing and sat on the City Planning Commission. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan and a master’s in city planning from MIT.¹¹

Her portfolio includes NYCHA, the Department of City Planning, and the Department of Buildings.³ Her signature initiative is “Block by Block,” a 10-year housing action plan released in June 2026 that calls for building 200,000 new affordable homes and preserving 200,000 existing ones.¹² She also led the SPEED Task Force (Streamlining Procedures to Expedite Equitable Development), which identified ways to cut affordable housing development timelines by up to two years for projects requiring zoning changes.¹³ Other early work includes a “Fix the City” enforcement program targeting negligent landlords, new Rent Guidelines Board appointments, and housing-related executive orders signed on Mamdani’s first day that relaunched the Office to Protect Tenants and set up faster construction on public land.¹⁴

Julie Su, Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice

Su, announced the same day as Bozorg, fills a role that did not exist under any previous mayor.¹⁵ She served as acting U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Biden, having previously been deputy secretary. In that federal role she was credited with securing over $1 billion in back wages for wage-theft victims and stabilizing pensions for over one million workers and retirees through the American Rescue Plan’s Special Financial Assistance program. She relocated to Brooklyn in March 2026 to begin the New York City role formally.¹⁶

Her portfolio covers the Taxi and Limousine Commission, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, the Commission on Human Rights, the Department of Small Business Services, the NYC Economic Development Corporation, the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Office of Immigrant Affairs, and the Office of Racial Equity, among others.³ Her first months have combined outreach to business leaders — including executives from the Real Estate Board of New York, JetBlue, Bank of America, and Blackstone — with enforcement actions on fair work week violations and delivery-app labor practices.¹⁷

Julia Kerson, Deputy Mayor for Operations

Kerson was announced on December 31, 2025.¹⁸ Her background is in infrastructure. She served as an adviser to Governor Kathy Hochul on major projects, playing what Mamdani described as a “crucial role” in developing the new rail tunnel under the Hudson River, and earlier was a senior adviser to the deputy mayor for operations in the de Blasio administration.¹⁹

Her portfolio includes the Departments of Transportation, Sanitation, Environmental Protection, and Parks and Recreation, the Fire Department, the Office of Emergency Management, and the Office of Technology and Innovation.³ A signature early priority has been the administration’s pledge to make the city’s bus system “fast and free.” In April 2026 she helped announce the Linden Boulevard redesign in East New York, which will add bus lanes serving 60,000 daily riders, install bus boarding islands, and improve connectivity to six subway lines.²⁰ The administration also created a Senior Advisor for Fast and Free Buses position that same month, naming Elizabeth Adams to coordinate the transit initiative across agencies.²¹

Helen Arteaga Landaverde, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services

Arteaga Landaverde, 49, was announced on December 30, 2025.⁴ Born in the U.S. and raised in Ecuador before returning to Corona, Queens, she earned a bachelor’s in chemistry from NYU on a full scholarship, a master’s in public health from Columbia, and a Ph.D. in community health and health policy from CUNY. She co-founded the Plaza Del Sol Family Health Center in Corona in 2009 and, from 2021 to 2026, served as CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst, becoming the first Latina to lead the hospital. During her tenure she secured nearly $140 million in federal, state, and city funding for hospital improvements, including $27.5 million from New York State for a new Women’s Pavilion and Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.²²

Her portfolio spans thirteen agencies and offices, including NYC Health + Hospitals, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Department of Social Services, the Administration for Children’s Services, and the Department for the Aging.³ She takes on the role amid reported federal fiscal pressure, with potential cuts to Medicaid, Affordable Care Act funding, and child care and social services grants under the current federal administration.²³

Renita Francois, Deputy Mayor for Community Safety

Francois was appointed on March 19, 2026, and is the first person to hold a deputy-mayor-level public safety position centered on community-led intervention rather than traditional law enforcement.²⁴ She grew up in South Central Los Angeles and started her career as frontline staff in public housing programs in Los Angeles and Compton before becoming a resource coordinator at Brooklyn Family Court. She holds a bachelor’s from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Cornell. She spent about seven years at the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, where she served as executive director of the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety and was the founding leader of the New York City Office of Neighborhood Safety, and later served as chief strategy officer at Tides Advocacy.²⁵

The Office of Community Safety

Francois heads the newly created Mayor’s Office of Community Safety, established by Executive Order No. 15. The office consolidates five previously scattered entities under one umbrella: the Office of Crime Victim Services, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, the Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence, the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, and the Office of Community Mental Health.⁵ It also coordinates the city’s B-HEARD mental health crisis response teams, though B-HEARD remains operationally under the Fire Department and NYC Health + Hospitals.²⁶ The office operates with a $260 million budget, largely pre-existing program funding, well short of the $1.1 billion department Mamdani envisioned on the campaign trail. The administration has described the office as a “first step” toward a permanent Department of Community Safety, which would require City Council action or a voter referendum to create.²⁴

Relationship With the NYPD

The Office of Community Safety does not have formal oversight authority over the NYPD, and the police department retains control of the 911 dispatch system. B-HEARD failed to respond to 35 percent of eligible calls between 2022 and 2024, and Francois has characterized the program as “underutilized and underfunded.”²⁷ She has said her approach is to act as a coordinator, working alongside the NYPD to find a “middle ground” that lets civilian teams handle more non-violent crisis calls.²⁴ NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said she “looks forward to working with Deputy Mayor Francois to ensure New Yorkers get the supports they need.”²⁸

The Rest of the Inner Circle

Several other senior officials round out Mamdani’s top team. Elle Bisgaard-Church, 34, serves as chief of staff, having managed Mamdani’s mayoral campaign and worked as his chief of staff in the State Assembly.²⁹ Ramzi Kassem is chief counsel, Sherif Soliman directs the Office of Management and Budget, and Steven Banks was confirmed by the City Council as corporation counsel in February 2026. Fuleihan, Kerson, Soliman, and Banks all served under de Blasio, giving the administration a spine of experienced hands paired with newer figures aligned with Mamdani’s democratic socialist politics.⁴

1
NYC Council. New York City Charter
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Vital City NYC. New York City Deputy Mayors on How Things Really Get Done
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NYC Mayor’s Office. Executive Order 02
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City & State NY. Who’s Who in Zohran Mamdani’s Administration
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NYC Mayor’s Office. Executive Order No. 15
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ABC7 New York. Dean Fuleihan Incoming First Deputy Mayor Believes Zohran Mamdani’s Agenda Is Achievable
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CUNY ISLG. Dean Fuleihan Bio
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NYC Mayor’s Office. Mayor Mamdani Releases Executive Budget Transcript
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NY1. Officials Thank Childcare Workers but Pay Issues Remain
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Crain’s New York Business. Mamdani Picks Leila Bozorg as Deputy Mayor for Housing
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NYC Mayor’s Office. Mayor Adams Names Leila Bozorg Executive Director Housing
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AIA New York. Block by Block: A Conversation With Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg
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NYC Mayor’s Office. Mamdani Administration Releases SPEED Reforms
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The Real Deal. Q&A With Leila Bozorg
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NY1. Mamdani Appoints Deputy Mayors for Housing, Economic Justice
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UAW Region 9A. Deputy Mayor Julie Su
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City & State NY. Julie Su: Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice and Damage Control
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The New York Times. Mamdani Names Top Deputies for Child Care, Infrastructure, Climate
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NY1. One on One With Mamdani’s New Deputy Mayor for Operations
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NYC Mayor’s Office. Mamdani Administration Announces New Bus Lanes and Infrastructure Upgrades
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NYC Mayor’s Office. Mayor Mamdani Names Elizabeth Adams Senior Advisor for Fast and Free Buses
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NYC Health + Hospitals. Helen Arteaga Landaverde
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Healthbeat. Helen Arteaga Landaverde: Mamdani Deputy Mayor From Queens and Elmhurst
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The Trace. Renita Francois: NYC Community Safety
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National Urban League. Renita Francois Bio
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City & State NY. 3 Big Questions About Mamdani’s New Office of Community Safety
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The Marshall Project. New York Police Mental Health Mamdani
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NYC Mayor’s Office. Mayor Mamdani Appoints Renita Francois as Deputy Mayor for Community Safety
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Politico. Mamdani Picks His Top Two City Hall Deputies