David Margalit (welcome)

Executive Director, Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University

David Margalit is executive director of the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University. The new University-wide center is the home of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, generates research and knowledge that advances effective city leadership and governance around the world, supports Harvard students in becoming part of a new generation of municipal public servants, and offers leadership development and training to equip mayors and senior city officials with the skills, tools, and techniques to tackle the leadership and management challenges they face in their cities.

Throughout his career, David has led teams that combine and harness insight and expertise from the private, public, and nonprofit sectors to improve how people live and organizations deliver. He has reimagined a variety of government services – overcoming constraints and inertia to foster innovation, build new service models and expand impact. As chief operations officer of the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority, he repositioned the agency responsible for NY’s $5 billion Clean Energy Fund to drive greater private sector investment in technologies such as energy efficiency, renewable energy, and electric vehicles. His experiences in New York City government include: leading efforts to make government more usable for businesses, turning around NYC’s workforce development and training services, revitalizing NYC’s services for small businesses and entrepreneurs, expanding access to financing for traditionally underserved markets, and improving customer service across multiple agencies. As a software executive, he led consulting services and improved his company’s ability to implement technology that automates municipal government services and manages infrastructure assets.

David has also served as an adjunct professor, most recently at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. He holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Delaware, where he was a Eugene DuPont Distinguished Scholar, and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Yingjing Deng (presenter)

President, HKS New England Alumni Association; MC/MPA 2018

Michelle De La Isla (moderator)

Former Mayor of Topeka, Kansas; MC/MPA 2023

Krizia Lopez

VP of Government Innovation at Work for America; MPA 2023 Bloomberg Harvard City Hall Fellow 2023-2025

Krizia Rosario Lopez is the Vice President of Government Innovation at Work for America, where she leads technical assistance programs to optimize hiring practices for state and local governments nationwide.

Krizia worked at Google for six years in international roles in Strategy & Ops, Marketing, and Skills Training before pivoting into the public sector. She most recently worked for the City of St. Louis as a Bloomberg Harvard City Hall Fellow in the Mayor’s Office, where she led a multi-million dollar hiring modernization push that successfully cut hiring times by half. Specifically, she led the implementation of the city’s first digital hiring system fully replacing paper & typewriters, as well as the first city workforce development strategy and compensation plan updates in 25 years. Prior to her work in St. Louis, Krizia led operations at a public school in NYC and founded several skill development programs for low-income youth.

Krizia earned her Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, where she served on student government, consulted for the U.S. Department of Labor, and was editor-in-chief of the Kennedy School Review. She earned her Bachelor of Arts cum laude from Columbia University, where she lived abroad in China as a Critical Language Scholar and Nicaragua as a Fulbright Scholar.

Alex Lawrence (panelist)

Chief People Officer, Boston, Massachusetts; MPP 2014

Alex currently serves as the city of Boston’s first ever Chief People Officer, where she oversees the Elections department and the People Operations Cabinet, which consists of the city’s central department of the Office of Human Resources, the Office of Labor Relations, and the Registry. Lawrence has spent her career in people, program, and project management in both the public and nonprofit sectors. She is a city hall veteran, spending the last decade in leadership roles across the administration including Deputy Chief of Administration and interim Chief Information Officer. Lawrence previously helped to transform the City’s Department of Information and Technology into an award-winning tech organization that leads in user-centered design.

She is passionate about organizational capacity building, process improvement, and creating a modern workforce that will produce the next generation’s leaders. Lawrence holds a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University.

Joe Curtatone (panelist)

Former Mayor of Somerville, MA; MC/MPA 2011

Joe Curtatone served as mayor of Somerville, Massachusetts from 2004 to 2022. Under his leadership, the city added public transportation, improved education, championed immigration, lowered crime, attracted business and development, and won the prestigious All-America City award twice in five years. Born and raised in Somerville in a family of first-generation Italians, Curtatone earned his Bachelor of Arts from Boston College, his law degree from New England Law, and his Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.He is currently president of the Northeast Clean Energy Council, where he oversees the growth and development of a green and equitable economy for the region.

Amy Mahler (closing reflections)

Director of Government Engagement, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, MC/MPA 2021