Meera Joshi is the Deputy Mayor for Operations, overseeing New York City’s infrastructure, public realm, and climate portfolio. Everyday, her teams work to expand the City’s open, green and aquatic space, reduce New York City’s building and transportation emissions as well as its waste stream, and protect New Yorkers from the ever-mounting threats from excessive heat and rainwater. This is done while ensuring that the city’s concrete infrastructure, such as water and sewer systems, miles of roadway, sidewalk, bike and bus lanes, hundreds of bridges, and tens of thousands of acres of parkland, and core foundational services, such as trash collections and clean drinking water, are strong, resilient, and reliable.
Prior to joining the Adam’s Administration, Meera Joshi was President Biden’s nominee for Administrator of USDOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the agency responsible for regulation of interstate trucking. In this role, Meera led initiatives aimed at improving roadway safety, the working conditions of truck drivers and accountability mechanisms to integrate automation. She was previously Chair and CEO of the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission, the nation’s largest for-hire transportation regulator where she spearheaded Vision Zero campaigns keeping high risk drivers and unsafe vehicles off the road and led landmark policy, including establishing robust open transportation data standards; enacting the nation’s first for-hire driver pay protection program and providing broad and on demand access to for-hire transportation for passengers who use wheelchairs.
In addition to transportation oversight, Meera was the Inspector General for New York City’s Department of Corrections, responsible for investigation of corruption and criminality at all levels of New York City’s jail operations and the First Deputy Executive Director of New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, leading investigations of civilian allegations of police misconduct. In addition to her government transportation experience, Meera served as General Manager for the New York Office of Sam Schwartz Transportation Consultants and was a visiting scholar at New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy.
Meera Joshi was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She holds B.A. and J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.