Mayor Zohran Mamdani has disbanded the entire advisory board of the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, removing top executives from Blackstone, Citigroup, and the city's real estate industry in what marks the first such wholesale purge in at least three mayoral administrations.
Mamdani sent letters to the outgoing board members thanking them for their service and telling them their tenure was over. The fund itself followed up with an email confirming the full board would be dissolved, the New York Post reported. Among those shown the door: Richard Born of BD Hotels, Jeffrey Gural, chairman of GFP Real Estate, Alex Katz, a senior managing director at Blackstone Inc., Edward Skyler, Citigroup Inc.'s head of enterprise services and public affairs, and James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York.
The mayor's office said it would name replacement board members later this year. But the dismissals follow a pattern that began within weeks of Mamdani taking office in April, when he started replacing experienced private-sector figures with ideological allies and community activists.
The Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City is no minor civic accessory. Founded in 1995, the nonprofit channels private-sector donations into city programs. Its 2025 tax filing showed $16.4 million cash on hand. Over the decades, it has raised hundreds of millions of dollars, including $107 million to support families of rescue workers killed or injured in the September 11 attacks and $54.5 million during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic for an emergency relief fund that covered meals and personal protective equipment for healthcare workers.
Those fundraising totals did not materialize from thin air. They came from the kind of business relationships Mamdani is now dismantling. The executives he removed sit atop firms that manage billions in assets, develop commercial real estate across the five boroughs, and employ tens of thousands of New Yorkers. Replacing them with people who lack those networks raises an obvious question: who writes the checks now?
Mamdani had already begun reshaping the fund's board of directors, a separate governing body, by appointing a former dockworker and a high school teacher shortly after taking office. The advisory board purge completes the overhaul.
Mamdani's senior advisor, Dora Pekec, cast the move as a step toward a more equitable model of civic philanthropy. She told the Post:
"The creation of a new advisory board is an important next step in reimagining how philanthropy can augment, but not replace, public dollars and public goods, and we are eager to share more about our new board of advisors later this year."
Pekec went further in a second statement, framing the shakeup as part of a broader governing philosophy:
"In January, our city entered a new era, one that demands our city government reflect our communities. The building of a new Mayor's Fund, built on the ethos of putting those directly impacted in the rooms where decisions are made, is a continuation of that work."
The language is revealing. "Those directly impacted" is activist shorthand for replacing professional expertise with identity-based representation. Applied to a fundraising board, it means swapping out the people who can raise money for people who receive it. That may satisfy an ideological checklist, but it does not explain how the fund will continue to deliver at the scale it managed after 9/11 or during the pandemic.
Mamdani's letter to the departing members was brief and polite on its face. "I commend you for your dedication and the benefit you have brought to our City as you conclude your tenure on the Mayor's Fund Board of Advisors," he wrote. None of the dismissed board members were quoted in the reporting, and it remains unclear whether any were given advance notice or an opportunity to respond.
The advisory board purge does not exist in isolation. Since taking office, Mamdani has systematically cleared out figures with institutional knowledge and replaced them with political allies drawn from activist circles.
On his first day, he signed executive orders that continued policies predating former Mayor Eric Adams' 2024 federal indictment while revoking or requiring reissuance of directives issued after September 26, 2024. He also launched a new Office of Mass Engagement, led by Tascha Van Auken, a Democratic Socialists of America organizer who ran Mamdani's campaign volunteer operation of over 100,000 people, Fox News reported.
That appointment signaled from day one that Mamdani intended to govern through movement politics, not managerial competence. The Mayor's Fund purge extends the same logic into the city's philanthropic infrastructure.
His personnel decisions have also drawn sharp criticism on matters of public safety. Mamdani ousted Rabbi Moshe Davis as executive director of the Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism, replacing him with Phylisa Wisdom, leader of the left-wing New York Jewish Agenda group. Wisdom has described Israel's defensive operations against Hamas as "state-sanctioned violence." Davis told the Washington Free Beacon he believed he was removed because of his pro-Israel stance.
"I'm a proud Jew who wears my kippah on my head and is proud of my heritage and the ancient Jewish relationship with the land of Israel. Maybe that wasn't the right vibe for them."
That dismissal came as antisemitic violence in New York City surged under Mamdani's watch, with incidents rising 182 percent in January 2026 compared to the prior year.
Mamdani's willingness to sever ties with the private sector carries additional risk given the fiscal questions already surrounding his administration. His universal childcare program faces cost overruns far exceeding original projections, and critics have questioned his habit of claiming credit for initiatives he did not originate.
Removing seasoned executives from a nonprofit that sits on $16.4 million and has historically served as a bridge between city government and private capital is not a neutral staffing decision. It is a statement about who Mamdani believes belongs in the room, and who does not.
The mayor's office has offered no details about the criteria for selecting replacement board members, no timeline beyond "later this year," and no explanation of how the fund will maintain its fundraising capacity without the donor relationships those executives brought. The administration has not disclosed the full list of dismissed members, the five names that surfaced were described as being among those let go, suggesting others may have been removed as well.
Meanwhile, national observers have begun watching Mamdani's trajectory as a test case for how far left a big-city Democratic administration can push before the consequences become undeniable.
The Mayor's Fund raised $107 million after the worst attack on American soil and $54.5 million during a pandemic that shut the city down. It did that because business leaders with deep networks and real capital sat on its board. Mamdani just fired them and promised to find replacements who better "reflect our communities." New Yorkers should hope those replacements can also reflect a checkbook.
