Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker names Philly Fire Commissioner Adam K. Thiel as her managing director

Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker on Tuesday announced that Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam K. Thiel will serve as her administration’s managing director following her Jan. 2 inauguration.

Thiel has been the city’s fire commissioner for almost all of outgoing Mayor Jim Kenney’s tenure. From 2019 to 2022, he also served as the director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management.

While serving in those dual roles, Thiel was part of the leadership team that oversaw the city’s response to COVID-19 and the civil unrest following the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. He was also the face of the city’s response to the January 2022 Fairmount rowhouse fire, which killed 12 people, including nine children, in one of the deadliest blazes in city history.

Parker emphasized Thiel’s extensive academic and professional credentials, noting that he — like Kevin Bethel, Parker’s pick for police commissioner, who developed a national profile a school safety reformer — is viewed as an expert in his field.

“Adam has deep expertise in crisis leadership, risk management, organizational development, data science, and strategy,” Parker said. “We seem to be accumulating quite a few national experts to the Parker administration who also have great experience and roots in our city.”

The managing director oversees city agencies, hiring top departmental officials and working hand in hand with the mayor. The appointee is essentially the city’s chief operating officer. The city Home Rule Charter designed the office as a barrier between the mayor’s political appointees and the operating agencies, such as the Streets Department and the Department of Licenses and Inspections.

Unlike the chief of staff and deputy mayors, who serve at the pleasure of the mayor and can be fired for any reason, the mayor cannot fire the managing director without cause.

The managing director is likely to be particularly consequential in Parker’s administration because she made improving city services a key part of her campaign, in which she promised to make Philly the “safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation.”

“Is your trash picked up on time? Are the illegal trash dumps removed from your community? Are emergency responders responding to incidents in a timely manner?” Parker said. “All of these essential services of city government and others and involve the supervision of the managing director’s office.”

Thiel said that he was initially surprised when Parker reached out to him about the position and became interested after hearing her plans, including “restoring a sense of lawfulness,” cleaning up Kensington, and implementing city services “that our residents, businesses, and visitors can see, feel, and touch with physical actions that make our lives better.”

“When the mayor-elect calls, you stop what you’re doing, and you listen,” Thiel said. “I was energized by her leadership, her vision, and I am so honored to be able to take on this new challenge.”

Thiel, 44, will replace Tumar Alexander, a City Hall veteran who has been Kenney’s managing director since 2020. Alexander was previously the top deputy under his predecessor, Brian Abernathy, who resigned after protesters criticized his role in the city’s response to the civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd.

When Thiel took over as fire commissioner in 2016, he inherited a department in turmoil. Response times were slowing, funding challenges were steep, and the department was reeling from the 2014 death of Joyce Craig, the first female firefighter to die in the line of duty. Following Thiel’s hire, officials with the firefighters’ union, Local 22 of the International Association of Firefighters, said they would have preferred Kenney tap an internal candidate.

But under Thiel’s leadership, firefighters said morale in the department improved. He fostered a better working relationship with the union, which last week inked a new one-year contract. With Thiel at the helm, the city reactivated seven fire companies that closed amid the recession, fulfilling one of Kenney’s campaign promises.

In Philadelphia, the fire commissioner also leads the city’s paramedics and EMTs, meaning Thiel has for eight years been part of the leadership team responding to various health crises, including the city’s gun violence and opioid epidemics.

Prior to that, Thiel held a variety of roles with Virginia’s state government, including deputy secretary of public safety and homeland security.

He has bachelor’s degrees from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and from the University of Maryland University College. He has a graduate degree from George Mason University, and is currently pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

Thiel, who lives in Old City and has four adult children, grew up in Chicago. After working first for two fire stations in Durham, N.C., he served in Virginia as a lieutenant with the Fairfax County Fire & Rescue Department before becoming the state fire director.

For three years, he worked as a deputy in the Goodyear, Ariz., fire department, and then returned to Alexandria, where he did a seven-year stint as chief of that city’s fire department.

His emergency operations experience includes responding to major disasters outside Washington, D.C., including 9/11.