How Adam Thiel became Mayor Parker’s right-hand man — and held a six-figure side job

When Philadelphia residents blasted plans for a drug treatment shelter in Fairmount, Managing Director Adam K. Thiel bore the brunt of their anger.

When lawmakers had questions about Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s plans to clean up Kensington, they grilled him.

And when crises have hit, like a police officer being shot in June, Thiel is on the frontline, flanking the mayor.

It’s been a tumultuous first seven months for the city’s former fire commissioner, now the No. 2 official in city government. As managing director, Thiel, 52, oversees day-to-day city operations and is often a point person on thorny issues, such as Parker’s signature goal of ending the Kensington drug market.

Under former Mayor Jim Kenney, Thiel was viewed as an effective emergency management expert, and generally kept a lower profile.

Now he’s increasingly in the spotlight.

The Center City resident and father of four adult children has a sprawling resumé and is a national leader in fire safety. While fire commissioner, he taught at two universities, pursued two post-graduate degrees, served on numerous professional boards, secured a coveted fellowship, and spoke at international conferences.

His affairs outside of city government also include consulting work. During his final two years as commissioner, he earned nearly a half-million dollars from two firms he cofounded, representing his largest source of income.

While other government officials have second jobs, Thiel’s work stands out for its scope — and its opacity.

Thiel continues to work part time as a consultant while overseeing more than a dozen city agencies, including the fire department, prisons, streets, Licenses & Inspections, and public health.

In an interview, he refused to disclose his consulting clients. One of his firms has no website; the other appears to have removed an online client list after The Inquirer asked about the business. When Thiel was fire commissioner, the department directed federal grant money to one of his former clients.

Thiel said his work never violated ethics guidelines, and his colleagues said his other jobs didn’t appear to interfere with his official duties.

Parker said in an interview that she was aware of Thiel’s consulting work when she hired him and that it “fortifies” her confidence in him because he’s a top expert in his field.

“His intellectual prowess, his institutional knowledge, and his academic preparedness to meet this moment, and his professional experience,” she said, “has him as a highly sought-after thought and opinion leader in this field of emergency management.”

Thiel was a 19-year-old college student in the early ‘90s when he drove by a firehouse in Montgomery County, Md., that was looking for volunteers. He signed up and was hooked, attracted to the teamwork and the feeling that every day would be different.

He worked stints as a firefighter, EMT, paramedic, and hazmat tech in North Carolina and Virginia. In 1999, he started his first consulting company, A-K Thiel Ltd., advising fire departments and government agencies.

“I wanted to make sure that I had backup options if I ever got hurt,” he said. “A lot of firefighters and paramedics have side jobs. Mine was consulting.”

Then, firefighting changed dramatically.

Thiel’s daughter was weeks old on Sept. 11, 2001, when was working in Virginia and a jet slammed into the Pentagon. He raced to the scene, then spent days decontaminating other firefighters as they emerged from the wreckage.

It’s one of the few parts of his personal life that he’s spoken about publicly. At a 9/11 memorial in Philadelphia two years ago, Thiel said that for the first responders like him, “there’s no danger of ever forgetting.”

Thiel climbed through leadership roles at a variety of fire agencies, moving to a Phoenix suburb to serve as deputy chief in 2004.

There, he and a business partner cofounded FACETS, a consulting firm that specializes in public-safety management, disaster preparedness, and related fields. Thiel remains a principal, but said he does not manage day-to-day operations.

In 2007, Thiel became fire chief in Alexandria, Va., and later served as Virginia’s deputy secretary of public safety and homeland security.

When Kenney became mayor in 2016, he hired Thiel as fire commissioner, bringing in an outsider — despite some in the department pushing for an internal hire. Thiel won over much of the rank and file, advocating to reopen fire companies closed during the recession and fighting for budget increases to buy new equipment.

“He was in line with our vision and gave our members the tools and provided equipment and safety nets that they didn’t have,” said Mike Bresnan, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 22.

Bresnan said firefighters came to see Thiel — who had himself dived into burning buildings before — as one of their own. Thiel promised his department he’d do what he could to reduce injuries and fatalities, but he was also honest: “It is something that you accept as being part of the job.”

The rest of the city got to know Thiel through tragedy.

In 2022, he was the face of the city’s response to one of the worst in recent memory: a Fairmount rowhouse blaze that killed 12 people from the same family, nine of them children.

Official reports said the cause was a child playing with a lighter who set a Christmas tree ablaze. Thiel saw a different root cause: the dearth of safe, affordable housing.

“It is much too simple and it’s wrong to blame a 5-year-old,” he said at the time. “It’s much bigger than that.”

As managing director, Thiel is today one of the highest-paid municipal employees, earning $310,000 a year, and wields significant influence over city policy and contracting.

Last year, Thiel reported in financial-disclosure forms that he earned more than $334,000 in outside income, dwarfing his $252,000 fire commissioner salary. In Thiel’s earlier years as commissioner, he earned far less in consulting income than he did over the last two years.

Records show that in 2018, the IRS filed a $257,000 tax lien against him and his ex-wife that involved unpaid business taxes — Thiel said the lien was linked to his divorce and that he entered into a payment plan with the IRS.

Most of Thiel’s outside income in the following years came from Pantheon Global Strategies, a firm he founded in 2021 that is based out of a second home in Delaware.

In an interview, Thiel described Pantheon as a C Corporation that does consulting work, and would not disclose its clients. He later said in writing that Pantheon’s only client is FACETS — his older consultancy — and that FACETS’ clients were listed online.

Earlier this year, the FACETS website listed a handful of clients, including the national firefighters’ union and fire safety companies. After The Inquirer asked Thiel about his clients, the page was altered to display a list of cities where the company has completed projects.

Sharon Gallagher, a spokesperson for the Managing Director’s Office, said the FACETS website “is updated regularly like most companies.” She said “many clients — past and present — are not publicly shared out of privacy or request.”

City ethics codes do not require Thiel to disclose his current or former clients. But Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the good-government group Committee of Seventy, said top officials should “set an example for public servants by being as transparent as possible.”

“Outside income streams themselves aren’t indicative of anything nefarious,” she said, “but given how many local politicians have been found by courts to have abused that trust, our leaders need to go above and beyond to show Philadelphians that they’re not taking advantage of the paychecks funded by taxpayers.”

Among the clients seemingly removed from the FACETS website is Kidde, an emergency supply manufacturer that received part of a $1 million dollar federal grant distributed by the city to purchase smoke detectors for distribution in Philadelphia in 2017, while Thiel was fire commissioner.

He said his financial relationship with Kidde predated his time as fire commissioner. Kidde did not respond to a request for comment.

Thiel said his consulting work never violated city ethics guidelines, which prohibit conflicts of interest, such as city employees taking official action that benefits a client of their outside business.

He said the city’s chief integrity officer and a lawyer for Parker’s campaign reviewed and approved his outside work, which he said currently takes fewer than 10 hours a week. Under city rules, he is not required to disclose outside income he earns this year until next spring.

In the top rungs of Parker’s administration, Thiel is unique. He’s a registered independent who hasn’t been involved in politics. Parker has run for office seven times. Her three other closest advisers are Democratic operatives who formerly worked in the White House or Harrisburg.

So it’s perhaps unsurprising that the rockiest moments of Thiel’s year have come down to politics.

In March, lawmakers peppered him with questions about Parker’s proposal to spend $100 million on “triage and wellness facilities” for people who use drugs. He said at the time one could open in weeks, but offered few details.

A month later, The Inquirer reported the Parker administration had quietly expanded capacity inside a Fairmount shelter to accommodate people who use drugs. Councilmember Jeffery Young Jr., who represents Fairmount, wasn’t informed. He and other members were incensed.

Days later, Thiel was back in front of Council, testifying about the facility and an upcoming homeless encampment clearing. He got into heated exchanges with members who said he wasn’t answering their questions.

“Every time you say, ‘Trust us,’ we want to do it,” Councilmember Rue Landau said, “but then something takes us a step backward.”

Former Managing Director Phil Goldsmith said the job is intended to be apolitical, but managing directors have often borne the brunt of criticism aimed at mayoral administrations. In 2020, then-managing director Brian Abernathy resigned following criticism of the city’s response to racial-justice protests.

“Being the fire commissioner, you have one basic objective, and that’s putting the fire out,” Goldsmith said. “Managing director, you got a lot of balls in the air.”

Despite the dustups he’s had so far, Thiel exudes confidence and stays on message relentlessly.

The day after the Fairmount community meeting — where Thiel faced down angry residents — he was asked whether he’d recovered from the night before.

“I can take it,” Thiel said. “When you’ve almost been killed a couple times, you tend to toughen up.”