Mamdani appoints Lillian Bonsignore to lead FDNY

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will announce Tuesday that former emergency medical services chief Lillian Bonsignore will lead the New York City Fire Department as commissioner. Bonsignore will be the second woman to lead FDNY, and the first uniformed woman to lead the department. 

Bonsignore, a longtime EMT, became the first woman to lead the department’s EMS bureau in 2019. She led EMS through the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the department saw record demand as the virus swept through the city. Mamdani emphasized that experience in a statement on Tuesday shared with City & State in advance of a public announcement.

“Bonsignore’s calm, decisive leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic – when EMS professionals were more vital than ever – is exactly the kind of leadership our city needs in moments of uncertainty,” Mamdani said.

Her appointment will be seen as a commitment to raising the pay of EMT’s, who have long lobbied for pay parity with other first responders. Bonsignore is coming out of retirement to join Mamdani’s administration after stepping down in 2022. 

Born and raised in the Bronx, Bonsignore was a single mom when she first became an EMT in 1991. She responded to the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, deployed from Fort Totten in Queens to the World Trade Center. (Mamdani planned to announce her appointment from Fort Totten Tuesday.) She steadily gained authority and status within the EMS division over her decadeslong career, becoming a lieutenant in 2002, captain in 2005, and deputy chief by 2009. 

She later took over EMS training as deputy assistant chief, a role in which she oversaw the certification of more than 13,000 EMTs, the Mamdani transition said.

The relationship between EMS and FDNY has been strained as EMS sees an exodus of first responders attributed to their relatively low salaries. EMS workers are paid significantly less than police and firefighters, and their starting salaries are lower than in many other cities. While all parties agree the EMS workers are underpaid, the Fire Department and the EMTs union have struggled to come to agreement. “If it stays on this path, FDNY EMS faces a future of worsening staffing shortages and slowing response times,” former Commissioner Robert Tucker, who stepped down on Friday, wrote in a recent New York Post op-ed.

Mayor Eric Adams appointed the first woman fire commissioner, Laura Kavanagh, in 2022. Kavanagh, who was not a uniformed firefighter or EMT but had worked in the department for years as a civilian, resigned in 2024, telling City & State, “It’s complicated to be a woman in power. … It’s especially more complicated when you’re first.” Reached by phone on Tuesday, Kavanagh said Bonsignore was a great pick, calling her “one of the strongest leaders I have ever worked alongside. Nobody knows the FDNY and what the department means to our city better than Chief Bonsignore. I saw firsthand Chief Bonsignore’s lifelong dedication to the FDNY, including her work on the front lines of COVID and in advocating for a long-overdue EMS pay raises.”

For her part, Bonsignore joked about her history-making career in a 2019 interview with the Daily News.

“It’s kind of odd that the thing I get celebrated for the most – people are always like, ‘Wow, you’re a woman and you’re gay’ – are the two things I put the least work into,” she told the tabloid.

The mayor-elect also announced he would retain Javier Lojan as interim commissioner of the Department of Sanitation and Zachary Iscol as the interim commissioner of New York City Emergency Management – suggesting the Adams appointees would stay in into the new year amid the snow season while continuing the search for permanent leadership.