Lorraine Grillo serves as the First Deputy Mayor of the City of New York in the administration of Mayor Eric Adams. Grillo serves as senior advisor to Mayor Bill de Blasio for COVID recovery and as Commissioner of the NYC Department of Design and Construction from July 2018 until December 2021.
She began her career at the New York City School Construction Authority (SCA) over 24 years ago as a Community Relations specialist. Over the years, she held a variety of positions within the agency including Director of Government and Community Relations, Senior Director of Real Estate Services and then Executive Director/Chief of Staff to the President.
In May of 2010, Lorraine took over as Acting President and CEO. After successfully opening 26 new schools, at the time, the single most successful year in SCA history, she was appointed President and CEO. In February 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio reappointed Lorraine to her position making her one of only two re-appointments from the prior administration and the longest serving SCA president.
Under her leadership, the SCA has successfully completed over 25 billion dollars of construction, producing over 75,000 new school seats and completing thousands of capital improvement projects in existing school buildings. She has led the SCA in its effort to find new and innovative ways to address school overcrowding including developing strong public/private partnerships with major developers. She met the challenge of completing the replacement of PCB containing light fixtures in 760 schools within five years. Her team was responsible for the reopening of 71 schools damaged by Hurricane Sandy in record time. In addition, in 2015, under her leadership, the SCA met the administration’s mandate opening 35 Universal PreK centers for the city’s four-year-old children in less than six months. Now that work continues with the addition of the 3K for All initiative. Throughout her career, she continues to be a tireless advocate for the MWLBE community, maintaining the SCA’s reputation for the best MWBE program in NY State, and as a national model.