Good Lives in Cities: New York City Department of Environmental Protection's Chief of Staff Anna Ponting on New Resources, Technical Solutions, and Financing
By Julia Gamolina
Anna Ponting is the Chief of Staff at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Prior to DEP, Anna was an impact investor at Goldman Sachs’s Urban Investment Group, where she made private equity, tax credit equity, and debt investments in socially impactful real estate developments. Anna has also worked as a consultant to global cities at Bloomberg Associates.
She started her career as an NYC Urban Fellow after receiving her B.A. in Urban Studies from Stanford University. Anna also has an MBA from Harvard Business School and Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. In her interview with Julia Gamolina, Anna talks about working across government administration, finance, and consulting to focus on cities and urbanism, advising those just starting their careers to choose their constants and work for interesting people.
You first studied urban studies — how did this focus for both came about, and what were you hoping to do in the world?
Studying cities felt natural to me. I grew up in San Diego, which is known more for its perfect weather than stellar urban design. But my mom was a transportation planner, so I probably heard things like transit-oriented development earlier than the average sixteen-year-old. My family’s big trips were always to Buenos Aires where my mom grew up and her family still lives. While getting on that packed metro system was scary, for a suburban kid I got to see early on both the vibrancy and the chaos of dense urban living.
When I got to Stanford, I decided to major in Urban Studies and never looked back. Understanding cities has been something of a Rosetta Stone. When I visited Istanbul or Amsterdam on research trips, I might not have been able to order a meal, but I could decode so much about what people were proud of or struggled with by the way they used their space. Living in Silicon Valley, though, it was clear that technology was changing the urban experience. I wrote my thesis on the then-brand-new concept of “smart cities” and cold-emailed Anthony Townsend, who was beyond generous with his guidance. When I graduated, I was probably 50% sure I wanted to be an urban planner, but 100% sure I wanted to be in New York City.
You then got your MBA. Tell me about the thinking behind this.
After working a few years in the public and social sectors, I had a decent handle on the problems I cared about. But didn’t feel I had the skills to solve them. One example has stuck with me: one of my projects with Bloomberg Associates was with the City of Detroit, which had recently declared bankruptcy and was dealing with the challenge of foreclosed homes that still had people living in them. I realized that for me to wrap my head around a holistic answer, I needed to better understand real estate finance – a skillset I didn’t have. I did the joint MBA and Master in Public Policy program at Harvard to train myself in those functional basics.
I’ve made academic choices to expand the available solution set. Graduate work in public policy and business were perfect because both are meant to develop the muscle of problem solving with limited information.
Groundbreaking of UIG-financed 100% affordable housing project in Atlanta in 2021. Courtesy of Anna Ponting.
Tell me about your first few career steps before joining the Department of Environmental Protection.
My first job after college was as part of the NYC Urban Fellows program, which is a fantastic way for young people to get their foot in the door in NYC government. It’s shockingly hard to get a public sector job straight out of college! It’s a big problem for government human capital. Anyway, I loved the scale. I was there during the transition between the administrations of Mayor Bloomberg and Mayor De Blasio, which was a powerful lesson in change management within large institutions.
From there I joined Bloomberg Associates, which had only been founded a couple of months earlier. The premise was essentially my Rosetta Stone observation from college; former New York City officials could be uniquely valuable advisors to other mayors’ offices because all local governments are responsible for similar things. I was lucky to get to work under Rose Gill — my first female boss and a total powerhouse — and a dream set of client cities including Mexico City, Rome, and Rio de Janeiro.
I left NYC for grad school but boomeranged back for a job at the Urban Investment Group at Goldman Sachs. I wanted to learn how to pay for the things I knew cities needed: mixed-income housing, commercial space for small businesses, cultural assets, and grocery stores. The job made me fluent in the financial and legal mechanics underlying real estate transactions. But more importantly, I learned bigger picture lessons about risk allocation, performance incentives, and restructuring when things don’t go well. Also, while women continue to be woefully underrepresented in finance, I was drawn by UIG’s long pattern of female leaders — while I was there, Margaret Anadu and then Sherry Wang — who have turned their passion for this work into a multi-billion-dollar business. When I left Goldman, I realized that the job had killed any remaining sense of imposter syndrome I might have been carrying around.
“At DEP we’re thinking about all the places we can eke out value from what is otherwise seen as waste. You’d be surprised how much renewable energy and nutrients you can pull out of sewage! That means less fracking, mining, and other assaults on the environment. It’ll take a lot of investment to get there, but the technical solutions exist.”
How did you get to the DEP? What are you focused on these days?
I had the opportunity to join DEP under our current commissioner, Rit Aggarwala, a longtime mentor, former professor, and colleague, who was about to take on a huge and exciting role under the incoming administration of Mayor Adams. It was an easy decision, and I haven’t looked back. It’s been such a fun ride to work for an ambitious, thoughtful leader who has a real sense of urgency around improving the way we serve New Yorkers.
At DEP, the biggest part of our job is running the country’s largest municipal water and wastewater system. Let me tell you, it is so interesting! I’ve become a walking trivia machine for fun facts about sewers. DEP’s services are as essential as they get, and New Yorkers are lucky to be able to take them for granted. It’s an underground system that is truly a case of “out of sight, out of mind.” At its most basic, I’m focused on positioning the agency to ensure the system’s longevity for the next several generations. With climate change, the playbook has to change. My job is a fun combination of managing the daily touchpoints with other parts of government, developing new policy, and shaping long-term strategic planning.
Visit to wastewater treatment plant in Brooklyn in 2023. Courtesy of NYC DEP.
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?
This is abstract, but for a long time I didn’t like accepting that the people and brands I associate myself with really do shape my outward identity. It’s taken some mental gymnastics to get comfortable working for huge institutions that lots of people hate. I remember telling my parents that I’d decided to go to Harvard Business School, and my dad responded with, “I always knew you were an elitist at heart!” He was joking, and has always been fully on Team Anna, but that instinctual reaction doesn’t come from nowhere — there’s plenty of distrust to go around. I love this about my family, and it’s made my personal negotiation with powerful institutions all the richer.
Managing this is a matter of reminding myself why it’s important for me to be in the rooms I’m in. Turning the proverbial big ship is hard, but we need thoughtful people doing it.
What have you also learned in the last six months?
Having come to a water utility from real estate, one thing I’ve thought a lot about is that there is far too little integration between horizontal infrastructure and vertical development. I think it’s a problem of incentives. Each player in the built environment ecosystem, public or private, has its own mission, financial incentives, and jurisdiction. We don’t have a great way of coordinating at a systems level.
Practically, this is really inefficient. Cities like New York desperately need new housing, but how they are going to have their water, energy, or transportation needs met is often an afterthought. This means we create unnecessary time mismatches when developing cities. I have to believe there are some technology solutions that can help here, especially around planning and coordination.
“Young people are often told to find mentors, which is an impossible ask — there’s no store for mentors. Work for interesting people, give it your all, and mentorship will come more naturally.”
What are you most excited about right now?
I’m really excited about business models that lean into the circular economy. It’s like the grown-up version of the reduce, reuse, recycle slogan of the 1990s. At DEP we’re thinking about all the places we can eke out value from what is otherwise seen as waste. You’d be surprised how much renewable energy and nutrients you can pull out of sewage! That means less fracking, mining, and other assaults on the environment. It’ll take a lot of investment to get there, but the technical solutions exist. There are also companies looking to do this for textiles, electronics, construction materials, metals, and so much more. It’ll be game changing if we can make these closed systems work.
Who are you admiring now and why?
Teachers, full stop.
What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And what does success in that look like to you?
I want to improve the baseline experience of people living in cities. I think a lot about the veil of ignorance approach. How can we make our cities into places where those of us who are living a good life would be willing to roll the dice on life circumstances again? I’m flexible on how I work on this question at any given point in my career, but I happen to be most interested in the built environment side of things.
World Cities Summit 2016 in Singapore. Courtesy of Anna Ponting.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
Three things. Choose your constant. I think of jobs as the intersection of content and function. Content for me has been a constant — cities and urbanism — which has allowed my function to change quite a bit through government administration, finance, consulting. Other people may have a functional skillset they love, like coding, and they’re agnostic about where they apply it. I advise people early in their careers to think about which variable they care about more. It really helps to narrow down what can feel like a paralyzing number of paths.
Then, work for interesting people. Young people are often told to find mentors, which is an impossible ask — there’s no store for mentors. Work for interesting people, give it your all, and mentorship will come more naturally. This has historically been more of a challenge for women, and far more difficult for trans or non-binary folks. I’m not sure it’s getting easier. We’ve all seen the stories about male managers that are reluctant to mentor women post-#MeToo. Men have just got to figure it out, and I’m glad to know many who have.
Finally, take the risk. The most interesting people I know have been willing to veer from the traditional path in their profession. One of the most essential skills in life is doing your own assessment of the downside and then acting. Before grad school, I quit a great job in New York, took a huge pay cut, and moved to Singapore to do a stint for their Centre for Liveable Cities. It turned out to be amazing. It felt like a risk at the time, both financially and personally, but recognized that the worst that could happen wasn’t that bad.