Zohran Mamdani will take the oath in a few weeks, and the city is buzzing less about the 34-year-old mayor than about the team he has picked to turn promises into practice. Some hires are familiar faces with decades of City Hall dust on their shoes; others are young activists who knocked on doors beside him last summer. Together they must steer a $115 billion budget, calm a restless police department, and keep Albany on the phone. Here is the lineup so far, introduced in plain words and without the usual jargon.
First in command after the mayor himself is Dean Fuleihan, the 74-year-old grandfather of city budgeting who once held the same job under Bill de Blasio. Critics say the choice is Mamdani’s way of answering worries that a freshman mayor might drown in red ink. Supporters call it smart insurance: Fuleihan knows every hidden trapdoor in the capital plan and still has lawmakers on speed-dial. When the pair stood side by side at the announcement, the photo looked like a skateboarder asking his retired uncle to co-sign a loan—odd, maybe, but reassuring to the bank.
Inside the mayor’s office, the gatekeeper will be Elle Bisgaard-Church, the 34-year-old who ran the campaign and previously kept Mamdani’s Assembly schedule color-coded and sane. She is a Democratic Socialists of America member, just like her boss, and she speaks the language of tenant unions and TikTok livestreams. Putting her next to Fuleihan is Mamdani’s way of saying he will not toss out the movement that lifted him, even while he borrows experience from the old guard. If the mayor forgets why he ran, Bisgaard-Church is hired to remind him daily.
Keeping order on the streets will still be Jessica Tisch, the NYPD commissioner who inherited the post and now keeps it despite sharp policy disagreements with the incoming mayor. Tisch, a career bureaucrat from a billionaire family, believes in data-driven patrols and tighter subway policing. Mamdani campaigned on ending stop-and-search excesses and shifting mental-health calls away from armed officers. Both say they have hashed out a shared goal: fewer guns, safer trains, and a department that treats every neighborhood as worth protecting. New York will soon learn whether respect can outrun disagreement.
Holding the city’s wallet is Sherif Soliman, the new budget director who has already served under three mayors, the transit authority, and the public university system. Colleagues describe him as the quiet person in the back row who suddenly speaks and solves a math problem that stumped everyone else. Mamdani wants to tax the richest five percent and launch universal child care without breaking the bank; Soliman must find the cash and the legal loopholes to do it. If he fails, the progressive dream becomes a line of red numbers.
Finally, Jahmila Edwards will run the shop that keeps City Hall talking to Albany and Washington. She spent eleven years inside District Council 37, the city’s largest public-sector union, and earlier worked for de Blasio when he was public advocate. Edwards knows which state senators demand housing funds and which congressional aides return calls at midnight. Mamdani’s boldest ideas—rent caps, new transit lines, thicker social-service checks—need signatures far above his pay grade. Edwards is the courier carrying those requests up the ladder, armed with maps, stats, and the patience of a kindergarten teacher on picture day.
Add the names together and you get a team that looks like a family reunion where the cousins barely agree on the playlist but still share the same last name. Whether this mix of veterans and visionaries can dance in step will decide if New York’s youngest mayor leaves office with trophies or headaches. For now, the city watches, hopeful and nervous, as the new crew moves its boxes into the corridors of power.
