Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani announced a number of key appointments to his administration Wednesday afternoon, including Julia Kerson, an infrastructure adviser to Gov. Hochul, who will serve as his top operations deputy at City Hall.
Kerson, whose appointment was first reported by the Daily News ahead of the announcement, will as Mamdani’s deputy mayor for operations oversee some of the city’s most public-facing agencies, including the Departments of Transportation, Parks, Sanitation, Buildings and Emergency Management.
Kerson has been Hochul’s deputy director of infrastructure since April 2024 and before that held jobs at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and in the deputy mayor for operations office she will now lead.
“The deputy mayor for operations role is a big one, a portfolio of agencies that provide services that touch almost every aspect of daily life, services that, when done well, are often invisible,” Kerson said, standing alongside Mamdani at a press conference in uptown Manhattan.
In addition to Kerson, Mamdani named Ahmed Tigani as commissioner of the Department of Buildings and Louise Yeung as City Hall’s new chief climate officer.
Ahmed Tigani, center, speaks at the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center in Manhattan on Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025, after Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, left, appointed him as commissioner of the Department of Buildings. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
Tigani, who’s currently the acting commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, will report to Kerson in his role, as will Yeung. It wasn’t immediately clear who will fill Tigani’s shoes at HPD, a key agency responsible for financing and preserving affordable housing in the city.
With his midnight Wednesday swearing-in ceremony in downtown Manhattan looming, Mamdani also at the afternoon press conference tapped Emmy Liss as the executive director of the mayor’s office of childcare. That was in addition to the main focus of the event: His appointment of Manhattan superintendent Kamar Samuels as New York City schools chancellor.
Even amid the torrent of new hires, Mamdani did not announce one key post at the press conference: Commissioner of the Department of Transportation. Several sources told The News that the expectation earlier in the day was that Mamdani would announce a DOT commissioner, with Mike Flynn, a transit expert with deep experience at the agency, seen as a favorite for the job.
Mamdani spokeswomen didn’t return requests for comment on when a DOT announcement could come. Flynn, who has served on the Mamdani transition team’s transportation committee, didn’t return messages.
Louise Yeung speaks at the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center in Manhattan on Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025, after Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani appointed her as City Hall’s new chief climate officer. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
The DOT commissioner — as well as the deputy mayor for operations — are uniquely important for Mamdani, who promised during the mayoral campaign to make the city’s public buses fast and free. The proposal to make the buses fare free will likely need approval from Hochul, who has been openly skeptical of that idea, but Kerson, as an ex-top aide to the governor, could be a force in trying to deliver on that Mamdani pledge.
While the buses themselves are controlled by the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Department of Transportation is responsible for the city’s streets, including the construction of busways meant to make public transit faster.
Busway construction has fallen short of mandated thresholds under outgoing Mayor Adams’ administration, and Mamdani vowed on the campaign trail to turn the tide on that trend.
Incoming Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, right, speaks at the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center in Manhattan on Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025, after Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, left, appointed him to the position. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
In Kerson — and potentially Flynn — Mamdani is signaling he will lean on veteran infrastructure and transit hands to help him implement his ambitious transit agenda.
Flynn worked at the Department of Transportation in a variety of capacities, mostly under ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, leaving the agency in June 2014 as its director of capital planning. Since then, he has been working in various senior roles at TYLin, a global engineering and infrastructure advisory firm that works with both public and private sector players.
With Evan Simko-Bednarski