Laura Kavanagh
Laura Kavanagh is a veteran public-sector leader with a reputation for taking on toughest and intractable problems. She served as the 34th New York City Fire Commissioner, overseeing the nation’s largest fire department, with 17,000 employees, a $2.3 billion budget, and 1.6 million annual 911 calls. She was the first woman to lead the historically male-dominated department and the youngest commissioner in more than a century.
Laura spent the first half of her career working on local, congressional, mayoral, and presidential campaigns and advising leaders at all levels of government, including as a senior advisor for the New York City Mayor.
As an executive at the FDNY for almost eight years before becoming Commissioner, she led through the city’s most challenging times: a worldwide pandemic, natural disasters, federal investigations and fiscal crises. She was at the forefront of modernizing the agency through technology innovation and transformation that made the agency more transparent, efficient, and effective. Her work and advocacy brought historic investments in the FDNY and the first responder workforce.
She has appeared on NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, Good Morning America, CBS Evening News, and the Drew Barrymore Show and been featured in Fortune, Crain’s New York Business, The Wall Street Journal, People Magazine, The New York Daily News, The Daily Beast, and The New York Times. She has been cited as an expert in homelessness and mental health, public safety reform, transportation, housing, labor negotiations, workplace discrimination, counterterrorism, technology, disaster response, and public health.
Laura received her BA from Whittier College and her MPA from Columbia University, and a certificate from the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Security. She serves on the board of the Community Service Society of New York and the Billy Moon Foundation, and as a Commissioner on the New York City Human Rights Commission. She is currently a fellow at NYU and a keynote speaker and writer on leadership, transformation, and resiliency.