A takeaway from hearing the story of  Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez was the importance of putting yourself out there and taking risks. The Chancellor did not think he would get the position, not just of Chancellor but also his previous jobs, but applied anyway. If you want to move up, take the risk. I was also very interested how the Chancellor worked both in the government in Puerto Rico, and in education. The variety of career fields excites me, because I don’t think I want to stay in one career my whole life.

Despite dealing with intense responsibility, as Chancellor but also in government, he seems to be in good spirits. His stories of walking the campus to revitalize himself are great, and I think it’s important to remember your primary motivations when dealing with difficult situations. For him, it was the students. 

We didn’t get too much into his day to day operations running the university, and I wish we were able to have more time to ask him questions about that. It seems that he spends a lot of his time advocating and talking to people about CUNY and its benefits. He also mentioned he is going to Albany soon. He seems to have accepted his role as a political figure. 

What I took the most out of our conversation with Janette Sadik Khan was her insistence on pushing through things that were unpopular at first. People are very resistant to change, and it is especially difficult to come between people and their cars and their parking. To circumvent this, she worked fast, bypassing people’s initial fears. When the residents found out they liked the spaces she created, they were happy with the change. I think there is an important lesson to learn here. If you are confident in yourself, then don’t let yourself be held back by others. If Janette Sadik Khan had not done what she did, I would not be biking around the city everywhere, and I would be taking the train to school everyday.

It is also a lesson on how you need to use what you have. With just paint and beach chairs, she completely transformed the space. There is something to be said about how a little bit of paint completely changes the psychology of how we view things, and how roads become fun plazas where people can enjoy themselves. 

The emphasis on pilot programs, which has been mentioned before by previous speakers, also comes back. It’s important to test things out, and to be OK with making mistakes. It is also very important to have data, and to measure the success or failures that you have. 

Dave Choski spoke a lot on the importance of equity. He said that equity cannot be tacked on to the end, but has to be “baked in” to whatever medical solution they are working on. This is because people who are marginalized are often the ones who are marginalized further during a crisis. They are hit the hardest. He also related this to his time as NYC health commissioner during Covid, saying that they tried hard to eliminate the systemic bias between black and white New Yorkers. He told the story of even after trying hard, he still was not able to eliminate that discrepancy. It makes me wonder how we can fix the deep-seated equity problems in our city? What are the long term goals, so if there is another pandemic, it won’t be split between races?

I also enjoyed his talks about the importance of forging a private and public partnership between healthcare sectors. Despite the fact public health and private healthcare have fundamentally different interests, they both ultimately serve similar purposes, and the majority of people who work in both sectors think about how they can help people. It is a positive outlook on the world that I think we can all learn from.

Choski’s personal advice, that we should have a list of short, medium, and long term goals, so we always remember to work on goals far in the future, is important. His advice to nurture your convictions, because they will be tested the most during a crisis, is also very wise.

Andrew Rein said that if he could control the budget, his priority would be figuring out which of NYC’s programs do and don’t work. He believes that NYC just throws money at things, without knowing if the investment is justified. An example he used is our education budget. We spend more than anyone else, and are worse in education than a lot of places. Due to this, I believe in the importance of pilot programs in NYC, small programs that test to see if something works before its implementation on a large scale. I think that pilot programs should be used more often.

The most impressive part about Andrew Rein was his emphasis on statistics. Everything he said was backed up by facts, and he seems to be as close to non-partisan as you can get. I was also impressed by his ability to criticize NYC, when so many other people (usually elected officials) must sandwich everything they say with “NYC is the best city in the world.” Additionally, despite all the problems that Andrew Rein talked about, he was still an optimist. That wasn’t because NYC was intrinsically better than any other city, but because we are humans working to make it better, and we’ve been in worse situations before (especially in the 80s).

One major takeaway I learned was the importance of third party organizations to keep the government accountable. CBC is funded by trustees. The government has a habit of underbudgeting and giving non-reliable budget information, so a nonpartisan group aimed specifically about the cost of funding, not whether a program should be funded or not, is really important to keep the government in check.

Exploring all of the diverse problems the class came up with was fun, but it makes me think how there must be so many more problems in very specific fields, ones which we have no experience in. Furthermore, depending on the group of people asked, the problems would be so different. If you asked a group of seniors, for example, they would probably have different answers. 

Listening to Jonathan Bowles gave me insight into how a variety of groups influence city politics. It is not just the mayor or bills introduced by City Council, rather, outside groups can work as a legislative subsidy to powerful NYC politicians and give aid or policy solutions. CUF coming into existence as an opponent to the Manhattan Institute gave important context into its background. CUF seems like a force for fact-based progressive policy in the city, so it was enlightening to hear from someone who has an effect on the policy, and therefore the motion, of our city.

He made an interesting point that there was nowhere for the homeless to go, besides shelters (where there are safety concerns) and affordable housing (where there is none), and so he called on lawmakers to find a solution on where to put the unhoused. I do not understand this point, as NYC does have other transitional housing besides shelters (safe havens, stabilization beds, and welcome centers) where the unhoused can work with case workers and stay in smaller, safer rooms. The problem is rather a lack of these facilities and a lack of care by lawmakers, not that the solutions don’t exist. I believe this is a potential example for CUF’s work, as they can make a report of the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of safe havens, and use their influence to persuade lawmakers to solve the issue. I believe this also speaks to the downside of being a generalist, because you can’t know everything about every field.

I like how Bowles explained the city government and explained the dynamics of the mayor, commissioners, and the city council. It was also interesting to hear how topics at the forefront of agenda setting are heavily influenced by advocates (and their interest groups). I am still curious how the actual think tank works. For an organization with so much influence, who decides which topics are focused on? How do they gather the data? 

I am thinking my policy area will be homelessness and the Department of Homeless Services. I am interested in the issue of homelessness and have a lot of experience doing advocacy work regarding it. I think the Department of Homeless Services has some fundamental issues that need to be fixed, but I am still its advocate. The problem of homelessness can be fixed.