New York – Emma Wolfe, Activist To Organizer, To City Hall

New York – Emma Wolfe, the newly named City Hall incoming director of intergovernmental affairs under a De Blasio Administration, points to her student activist days in college as the kick start to her career in government.

In an interview with The Capital (http://bit.ly/1dkUflg) Wolfe specifically remembers the emotional rallies she was part of in protest of the murder Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming student who was killed in 1998 in an anti-gay attack.

Wolfe says, “For me just personally, and I don’t know how to go into more detail on it, there are certain times when you’re doing that kind of activism and you’re become more politically aware and socially aware and at the same time going through your own kind of journey,” said Wolfe, who is a lesbian. “There are moments when those kinds of things converge and obviously, for me, that was one.”

After her early start in student activism, Wolfe began a career as an organizer for ACORN, America Coming Together and the health care workers union 1199SEIU before she joined the Working Families Party running campaigns across the city and state.

She assisted with Bill de Blasio’s election as public advocate in 2009 and worked as deputy campaign manager for his mayoral race earlier this year.

Wolfe’s current responsibilities include getting Albany to approve de Blasio’s income-tax hike on city residents, which would make more than $500,000 annually to fund universal pre-kindergarten and expanded middle-school programs.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Senate Republicans are against raising taxes. She also must push de Blasio’s agenda in Congress and in the City Council.

Wolfe will assume her new post on Jan. 1.