Fil-Am named deputy mayor of New York City

Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer has held three top positions in New York Cify’s government. AAPIP

NEW YORK – Mayor-elect Eric Adams has appointed a Filipino American career city official among his five deputies who will lead behind-the-scenes work.

Maria Torres-Springer was named deputy mayor for Economic and Workforce Development. Torres-Springer is one of two Asian Americans appointed as deputies, the first such appointees in the city’s history. The other, Meera Joshi, is deputy mayor for Operations.

Torres-Springer was previously the city’s Small Business Services commissioner. Most recently, she served as commissioner for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the nation’s largest municipal housing agency.

She earlier served as the first female president of the New York City Economic Development Corp. (NYCEDC), where she led the implementation of the new citywide ferry service and made major investments in key sectors in the city’s economy.

Torres-Springer also was executive vice president and chief of staff at NYCEDC during the administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg..

Torres-Springer was born in California a year after her parents moved to the United States from the Philippines. Her father, Manuel, is from Pampanga and her mother, Elsa, is from Batangas. She is the second of six siblings (she has four sisters and a brother). She earned her bachelor’s degree in ethics, politics and economics at Yale University and her master’s in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Adams’ first deputy mayor is Lorraine Grillo, who has been Mayor Bill de Blasio’s COVID “recovery czar,” as well as the longtime CEO of the School Construction Authority and commissioner of the Department of Design and Construction.

In addition to Grillo, Adams named Anne Williams-Isom as deputy mayor for Health and Human Services; and Sheena Wright as deputy mayor for Strategic Initiatives.