Elle Bisgaard-Church named chief of staff as Zohran Mamdani shapes City Hall team

New York City’s incoming administration took clearer shape on Monday, Nov. 10, 2025, as Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani selected Elle Bisgaard-Church to serve as his chief of staff. The move elevates one of his closest advisers to the most powerful unelected post in City Hall, signaling a bid for tight message discipline, rapid execution, and alignment with the affordability agenda that defined his campaign.

Who is Elle Bisgaard-Church?

Elle (Elliana) Bisgaard-Church, 34, is a California-born political adviser who rose quickly inside New York politics. After graduate studies focused on public policy and taxation, she joined Mamdani’s Assembly office in late 2020 and built a reputation as a behind-the-scenes organizer with a data-first approach to coalition building. She later managed Mamdani’s successful 2025 mayoral primary and served as a senior strategist through the general election, where allies credited her with unifying field operations, message testing, and digital content under a single, consistent framework.

Bisgaard-Church’s profile is atypical for a City Hall gatekeeper: more strategist than schmoozer, more analytics than glad-handing. People who have worked with her describe a relentless focus on sequencing—lining up policy design, legal review, budget paths, and outside advocacy so that high-visibility pushes arrive only when the underlying machinery is ready to move.

What the Bisgaard-Church appointment signals

Choosing Bisgaard-Church as chief of staff suggests the Mayor-elect intends to centralize policy and political decision-making in a compact, trusted inner circle. The chief of staff not only manages the daily flow of City Hall but also arbitrates among deputy mayors, agency heads, and external stakeholders. With Bisgaard-Church in the chair, expect:

• Message cohesion: A preference for clear, repeatable talking points that tie every initiative back to cost-of-living relief.

• Front-loaded planning: Rollouts that pair headline proposals with rulemaking timelines, budget memos, and pre-negotiated milestones to avoid “announce now, figure it out later.”

• Movement-government bridgework: Continued engagement with labor, tenant, transit, and social-services networks that helped power the campaign—tempered by the compromises required to govern a 300,000-employee city.

The early agenda for Elle Bisgaard-Church at City Hall

Mamdani campaigned on an affordability platform that will test City Hall’s ability to deliver near-term wins while laying groundwork for structural change. As chief of staff, Bisgaard-Church will be the point person for knitting these strands together:

• Transit affordability and speed: Expect efforts to accelerate bus-lane buildouts and signal priority, while exploring targeted fare relief or cost-free pilots that can be funded within existing budgets.

• Housing and tenant stability: Coordinating with the Council and state partners on rent policies, code enforcement backlogs, and faster approvals for affordable housing—without sacrificing safety or neighborhood input.

• Childcare access: Scoping a phased plan that combines city-run seats, vouchers, and provider stabilization, while guarding against workforce shortages that can derail implementation.

• Procurement and delivery reform: Using the mayor’s management powers to streamline contracting, shorten capital project timelines, and professionalize project management—crucial for converting promises into ribbon cuttings.

A mixed test: ambition meets constraints

The to-do list is long, but the calendar is short. New York’s fiscal picture will shape what’s possible in the first six months. Bisgaard-Church will need to sequence early wins—particularly those with visible neighborhood benefits—while protecting the larger budget for multiyear projects. That means prioritizing items with:

1. Low cost, high visibility (street design fixes, enforcement blitzes on quality-of-life issues that don’t rely on punitive sweeps).

2. Clear legal authority within the city’s existing powers, avoiding Albany-dependent gambits until coalition-building matures.

3. Measurable benchmarks that can be published monthly to keep agencies, unions, and the public aligned.

Key relationships and the machinery of government

The chief of staff’s effectiveness will turn on her ability to manage laterally. Early signals point to a leadership map that pairs a seasoned operations hand in the first deputy mayor’s office with Bisgaard-Church’s central command at City Hall. In practice, that division lets the first deputy own day-to-day service delivery while the chief of staff guards strategic coherence, runs the agenda-setting meetings, and decides what reaches the mayor’s desk.

Outside the bubble, Bisgaard-Church will also need to sustain constructive channels with:

• City Council leadership and committee chairs to pace legislation and avoid last-minute friction.

• State partners on housing, transit funding, and public-safety frameworks.

• Civil service, labor, and nonprofit providers who ultimately make policies real on the ground.

What to watch next

• Transition playbook: Look for a 100-day document that assigns owners, deadlines, and metrics to the top promises—and a public dashboard to track them.

• Agency head appointments: The names tapped for transportation, housing, social services, education, and budget will reveal how aggressively the administration aims to move.

• Early executive actions: Expect a burst of mayoral directives and pilot programs in January that don’t require new legislation but deliver tangible neighborhood impacts.

• Budget signals: The preliminary budget (due early winter) will be the first hard look at how the affordability brand translates into line items.

Elle Bisgaard-Church

By elevating Elle Bisgaard-Church to chief of staff, the Mayor-elect is betting that the disciplined, metrics-driven approach that won the campaign can also win the work of governing. The portfolio is sprawling; the timeline is unforgiving. If the new administration posts quick, measurable gains—faster buses, steadier rents for vulnerable tenants, fewer bureaucratic bottlenecks—Bisgaard-Church will be credited as the architect who turned campaign clarity into City Hall execution. If the gears grind, she will be the one expected to fix them.