Familiar faces and an unusual structure: How Cherelle Parker is shaping her mayoral administration

After Cherelle Parker was elected mayor, Ryan Boyer, who cochaired her transition committee, said her team “will be focused on finding the best and brightest from across the city, around the country, internationally.”

“We truly want the best,” Boyer said.

As it turned out, they didn’t have to look too far.

Parker, whose inauguration is Tuesday, so far has announced her selections for 17 senior members of her administration, including her chief of staff, deputy mayors, police commissioner, and managing director. Every one of them is from Philadelphia or has worked in government or politics here.

» READ MORE: Who Philly Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker has picked for her cabinet and senior staff

Many key roles in the administration are still up for grabs, and Parker has acknowledged that her transition process was a slow one — a consequence, she said, of her employing a professionalized recruitment process rather than “hook-up culture,” as Boyer called typical policitized hiring.

But her administration is beginning to come into focus, and while it will involve many familiar faces — likely to the dismay of those hoping for major change in City Hall — it will take an unfamiliar shape, she said.

Parker said she didn’t want there to be one go-to person for those hoping to get in the mayor’s ear.

Instead, the administration will be led by a trio of senior aides Parker calls her “big three”: chief of staff Tiffany W. Thurman and chief deputy mayors Aren Platt and Sinceré Harris. And she has hinted that it will have a novel organizational chart, with fewer people reporting directly to the mayor, to be unveiled after she settles into office.

“People were expecting to hear the name of the one person who was the big mahoff, so to speak. You know — ‘You want to get access to the mayor? You have to look to the big mahoff,’” Parker said. “My mind doesn’t work that way. We have a team of people with very specific skill sets and talents who are equal.”

Thurman said the three aides call themselves the “T.S.A.” — a play on their initials, but also a message: To get to Parker, you need to go through T.S.A.

Parker has also made diversity a priority. Eleven of the 17 selections announced so far are people of color, and six are women.

Parker is not someone who flies by the seat of her pants, and her approach to the transition process was deliberative and plodding.

Conversations for some positions, such as police commissioner, started soon after she won the Democratic primary in May, all but guaranteeing she would become the city’s 100th mayor. But for many positions, the work of vetting candidates didn’t begin until after the Nov. 7 general election, in which she easily defeated Republican David Oh.

“Cherelle thought it was very important [that] until she was mayor-elect — that’s when she officially wanted to run as fast as she could,” said Beth Hare, one of two executive recruiters hired by the transition committee.

Some key roles, such as the city representative and the chief administrative officer, are yet to be filled, and Parker has not named commissioners for almost all of the operational departments, such as streets, parks and recreation, and public health.

Parker said some people encouraged her to have the top 30 members of her administration in place “by the time I put my hand on the bible” to take the oath of office.

“No one will bully us into thinking that we will be forced to make a decision until we know it is right for our vision, it is right for our chemistry, it is right for the people of our city, and our team,” Parker said. “We are not trying to rush to get it done fast. If that was the case, we could go it alone. We could just do it without a team. We’re trying to do it inclusively, intentionally.”

Parker and Boyer, who heads the building trades unions and was a key backer of her campaign, insisted that candidates submit applications through the transition committee’s website, rather than calling in a favor with Parker or someone close to her.

Next, prospective candidates were interviewed by Hare and John Salveson, the other executive recruiter. They screened applicants to make sure they aligned with Parker’s vision and could be a fit.

For serious contenders, Parker had candidates interview with a panel of “subject matter experts,” including former officials who previously held the job in question. Two ex-police commissioners, for instance, screened Kevin Bethel, Parker’s choice to be the city’s top cop next year. And three former managing directors interviewed candidates for that role, which will be held by Adam K. Thiel, who was fire commissioner under Mayor Jim Kenney.

One of Thiel’s interviewers was Phil Goldsmith, who was managing director under former Mayor John F. Street and worked with former Mayor William J. Green III as he filled out his administration in 1980. Goldsmith said their hiring process “was not nearly as extensive or broad” as Parker’s, which he described as “unprecedented in my lifetime.”

“The fact that she brought in these subject-matter experts is a recognition that she knows what she doesn’t know and wants to get the input of people who have been there, done that,” he said.

Parker’s depersonalized process did not prevent her from picking a number of people already in her orbit.

Some of her appointees come from the staff of City Council, where she was majority leader until running for mayor, including her communications director, Joe Grace, and budget director, Robert McDermott.

Other appointees go back multiple administrations. Finance Director Rob Dubow has held his title since the start of Michael A. Nutter’s administration, and Carlton Williams, whom Parker tapped to lead the new Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, has led several city agencies, most recently the streets department under Kenney.

Parker said she knew she wanted to hire locals for certain roles, especially the police commissioner, who she said repeatedly shouldn’t need “a GPS to get to 52nd and Market.” But she didn’t intend to hire so many people with Philly ties for other positions.

Nonetheless, she said she’s “pleasantly surprised” by how it shook out.

“These people just had a Philly grit, determination, a resilience. They just had it,” she said, adding that even the City Hall veterans she has hired “are trying to think outside the box, do things differently, be responsive.”

The preponderance of Philadelphians masks a notable lack of City Hall lifers at the very top of the administration.

While Platt and Harris — the two architects of Parker’s campaign who will serve as the chief deputy mayors — are both native Philadelphians, they are also relative outsiders to City Hall because they have worked primarily in state and federal politics. Thurman served in Kenney’s administration, as chief of staff in the department of parks and recreation, but has spent most of her career in finance and nonprofits.

And although Thiel served in the last administration, the Chicago native was new to Philly when Kenney appointed him eight years ago, and has worked in five states, including holding statewide roles in Virginia.

Goldsmith said the value of whether a staff member has experience in the city depends on the context.

“You always want different types of perspectives and you want to learn what other cities are doing, but there are different ways of doing that,” he said. “It’s good to have outside perspective, but she needs people that she feels comfortable with.”

There’s also the city’s parochial political class to consider. Goldsmith recalled that during Street’s administration, he sought to hire a director of emergency management who had “unbelievable experience” but was from out of town.

“City Council was like, ‘Boo — couldn’t you find someone from inside the city?” he said.

Public affairs consultant Larry Ceisler said knowing City Hall inside and out isn’t all-important. He pointed to David L. Cohen, former Mayor Ed Rendell’s chief of staff, who is viewed by many as the “gold standard” of senior administration officials but had not worked in city government before.

“A lot of it is about politics and relationships, and they’ll find the people to execute it,” he said. “They’re smart people. They’ll learn.”

What mattered most for Parker this time was picking the right police commissioner, and Ceisler said it was “unanimous she picked the right person for the right time” in Bethel, who spent decades in the police department and has experience in criminal justice reform.

“For most people, public safety is No. 1, and she hit that out of the park,” he said.