Kathy Wylde on liaising with billionaires, her retirement and why the business community is ‘terrified’ of Zohran Mamdani

In a city constantly in motion, tumbling from one historic moment to another, there was probably never going to be a picture perfect moment for one of its most in-demand civic fixers and behind-the-scenes power brokers to retire. Nevertheless, that time has almost come for Kathryn Wylde, who announced last month that she will be stepping down as CEO and president of Partnership for New York City in June 2026 after several decades of advocating for the city’s business sector. 

But don’t expect her to slowly recede into the shadows over the next 12 months. Wylde, a confidant and connector of billionaires, nonprofit leaders, mayors and governors and business titans alike, will likely continue being busy. There’s finding a successor, crafting ballot proposals as a member of the Charter Revision Commission, continuing to bridge the public and private sector – and perhaps most importantly, supporting the next mayor of the city at a time where federal funding cuts and the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation strategy loom. 

City & State spoke with Wylde about what it’s like to be the city’s leading business advocate, the competitive New York City mayoral election, how the business community feels about Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, her unique relationships with the city’s most powerful individuals, and the ongoing search for a potential successor. Excerpts from this interview have been edited for length and clarity.

You are planning to retire from the Partnership for New York City next June – that gives you a fair amount of time although I imagine it’ll go by quickly. What are your biggest priorities in the months to come?

Since we are seeing a mayoral election coming up, No. 1 has to be that regardless of who the next mayor is, the business community needs to be plugged in and prepared to support them. I think the biggest challenges are going to be federal funding cuts for the city, the mass deportation policies for immigrants in a city that is half immigrant, and how we're going to navigate both the fiscal and the financial implications of policies flowing out of Washington that target New York and other blue cities.

One of the big themes in this final stage of the Democratic mayoral primary is this dichotomy between seasoned experience and fresh exciting ideas. As we’ve seen the race narrowing into a two-man battle between former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, there’s been a lot of conversations about which of these two things is most needed at this time. Where do you stand on this? 

I don't think it's a competition of ideas versus experience. I think that, in general, our elections have become an ideological battle, which I think is unfortunate. New York has been successful because we've been pragmatists for 400 years where we basically have had a very tolerant open society that welcomes diverse ideas, welcomes freedom of thought and has been focused on solving problems rather than battling ideologies. I'd like to see us go back to that orientation. I think in the last probably 15 years, we've just become much more ideological – as has the country – and that has divided us in ways that are not productive. This is a national phenomenon and it has to do with the wealth gap, with financial insecurity that people feel, and the fact that since the 1970s real wages have not really increased to keep up with the cost of living. In New York City it’s particularly profound because we’ve become the most expensive city in the country, the third most expensive city in the world, and peoples’ wages have not kept up with that. 

How does the business community feel about Mamdani?

Terrified. 

Care to elaborate? How much of that is him as a person versus fearmongering that is getting whipped up by his opponents? 

I don't think you can answer that question, because not very many business leaders have sat down with him. Those that have see him as a bright young man, but one who proclaims an ideology that they're concerned about and at the heart of that is that local government somehow has the resources to solve all problems. For those of us who have been around for a while, we recognize that the city tax base is not deep or broad enough to solve all problems. We need a combination of public and private investments. We have to encourage private investment, which is what the partnership has been dedicated to. And we need federal support, and to get that, we have to be a united city, not one that divides us, not one that splits us up.

Have you sat down with Mamdani? If so, what was your impression? 

Yes, I’ve sat down with him. I've had good conversations with him, but I can't say I think I've had any influence on him.

From your perspective, do you feel like he’s been open to meeting with other people in the business sector and making an effort there? 

I think he has been open, but I said to him early on that he had to clarify positions and particularly make clear why people should not be afraid of him as a source of antisemitism or as a source of anti-capitalism in the commercial capital, financial capital of the world. He has not developed a message that makes that clear. As a result, I don’t think he has bridged that gap. 

What did you think about how The New York Times weighed in on the mayoral race? First with the panel of experts convened by the opinion section and then most recently, with the editorial board piece published earlier this month? 

I was glad that the Times made the effort to focus attention on the candidates in the mayoral race after they had said last year that they weren't going to endorse one. I thought it was helpful to the conversation. I think it's gotten a lot of attention – controversy and attention – and I think that's what this mayoral election has been about. I think it's an honest reflection of what's going on.

What role do you expect to play in wake of the Democratic primary? 

We will work with whoever wins and we will certainly reach out. To the extent that the winner of the Democratic primary wants to meet with the business community, we will facilitate that. We've facilitated meetings with basically all the primary candidates for those business people who wanted to meet them and we will continue to do that post primary and into the general.

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You’ve built a reputation over the course of your career for having the ear of many powerful people – a sort of billionaire whisperer and the city’s most in-demand fixer. What do you make of this reputation?

I went to work for David Rockefeller in 1981 when he was getting the Partnership for New York City started, and he was the most significant corporate citizen of New York at the time. So I had the unique opportunity with his blessing to meet and work with a full range of the city's leaders from business, labor and government. He provided me as a staff person at the time an opportunity to lead his priority effort, which was to rebuild the city's residential neighborhoods that had burned down and develop homeownership housing on them. (Editor’s note: An effort that resulted in the construction of 40,000 new housing units.) This was done largely with private funds, using city-owned land to rebuild a middle class that had basically left the city with the loss of employment opportunities that happened in the ‘70s.

Forty three years later, I consider myself really, a messenger, a vehicle, a bridge between the various sectors of the city economy, because I'm not a billionaire or anything close. I'm a resident of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in a modest apartment facing all the challenges that every New Yorker faces.

I would imagine you’ve got a lot of fascinating stories from that. 

It was an accident of history, as I say. I was asked to write a paper outlining a program that David Rockefeller could use to launch a housing initiative in the city. I wrote the paper at the request of Harry Van Arsdale Jr., who was then head of the labor unions in the city. Harry invited me to go with him to present the paper to David and David said he liked it and that I was hired. It was crazy. I was at a community nonprofit in Brooklyn with no exposure to the Manhattan world at all. 

How is the search for a successor going? 

There is a search process underway for a successor and a search committee. That process has started. I think New York is filled with people who appreciate both the private and the civic side of engagement with the city. So I think there are lots of potential successors. I don't think we're looking for a replacement for me, because I kind of have founder syndrome having been here all these years. But we’re looking for somebody who understands the complexity of the city, who has great commitment to it, and who has relationships in both the public, private and nonprofit sectors.

What are you most proud of accomplishing? 

Well, it's hard to be doing real things. My first 15 years of the partnership were involved with building housing and rebuilding communities across the five boroughs – taking neighborhoods that were burning and turning them into Renaissance communities. From the South Bronx to Harlem to north central Brooklyn to North Shore Staten Island to Southeastern Queens, we brought private capital into communities that had not seen private investment for half a century. 

It was really the willingness of the banks and the builders to take the risk, and importantly, of the home buyers, because there were no values in these neighborhoods so we had to pre-sell the houses before they were built. People put their downpayment and then they watched while their house got built. It was really quite unique. That first site was in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn and we had a bingo lottery bin where David Rockefeller, Gov. Cuomo and Sen. Alfonse M. D'Amato drew the winners out of the lottery bin to go buy a house in Brooklyn.

Do you think there's still opportunities to build housing yet to be unlocked that are comparable in scale to that initiative? 

Not at the moment. We have to rethink how we're going to create the programs and the opportunities. We really don't have any scalable home ownership opportunities at the moment. I think we've got a lot of work to do to restore or to find new ways to address those problems and figure out how to access land at a reasonable price. That is what the city is trying to do with the rezoning programs that the Adams administration has put forward like City of Yes for Housing Opportunity. 

The mayor’s second charter revision commission, which I'm on, is going to recommend some land-use revisions that will pursue the same idea. We've got to make it easier and less costly to develop a variety of sites across the five boroughs and to encourage private investment rather than expect the government to pay for everything. There’s just not enough public dollars to do that particularly with what’s coming down the pike from Washington in terms of cuts.

What were your relationships like with the city’s previous mayors? 

I would say that I’ve known all the mayors since Mayor John Lindsay. In my professional youth, I was sometimes demonstrating against them or their projects as a community organizer out in Brooklyn, but I really think with the exception of being briefly banned from City Hall by Rudy Giuliani at the end of his administration, I’ve had good working relationships with all our mayors because that’s my job. To the extent they wanted to take advantage of the resources and expertise of the private sector, those relationships have been stronger. 

I came to the partnership during the Koch administration and we had a very strong working relationship. The city did not have money to rebuild the neighborhoods and do what needed to be done so they really needed the private-sector investment. I had a very close working relationship with David Dinkins. When he was borough president, I worked with Nancy Wackstein who worked for him and together we wrote his first homelessness study and report. When he went into City Hall, he offered me a job, but it wasn’t the job I wanted so I didn’t take it. And then my relationship with the Giuliani administration started out strong, but deteriorated a bit in the last few months. Of course, Michael Bloomberg had been a member of the partnership before becoming mayor so we worked very closely with him. We also did some activity with the de Blasio administration, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic and helping him retain mayoral control of school management. Not so much otherwise, that was a time when City Hall wasn't looking for expertise or advice from the private sector, they had all the answers. 

What sort of voice do you see yourself being after you retire? 

I’ve threatened to become a social media influencer. But in all seriousness, we will see. I don't have any specific plans except to continue to be supportive and to support the new generation of leadership in all sectors. I’ve got a big Rolodex and to the extent that I can be helpful, I will put it to work.