Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker announces her ‘Big Three’ staffers who will lead her administration

Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker on Monday announced that she is tapping a trio of top staffers to lead her administration next year.

Tiffany W. Thurman, a vice president with the Greater Philadelphia YMCA who served in outgoing Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration, will be Parker’s chief of staff. Sinceré Harris, who left a job at the White House to become Parker’s campaign manager, will be chief deputy mayor of intergovernmental affairs, sustainability, and engagement. And Aren Platt, who was senior adviser on the campaign, will be chief deputy mayor of planning and strategic initiatives.

“I could not be more proud to announce my ‘Big Three,’” Parker said in a statement. “Tiffany, Sinceré, and Aren will be the leaders at the top of the Parker administration’s organizational chart, and I know they will be working tirelessly for the people of Philadelphia.”

» READ MORE: Meet the staffers who ran Cherelle Parker’s historic campaign and will lead her mayoral administration

Mayors have wide latitude to shape their administration, and Parker acknowledged that appointing three top staffers is an unusual arrangement.

“No one like me has ever been elected Mayor of our city, and no one has ever organized their senior staff this way,” Parker said, “but I was elected to fulfill promises made to the people of Philadelphia, and these are the people to do it.”

The announcement marks the second major personnel decision Parker has unveiled since she won the Nov. 7 election over Republican David Oh. Four weeks ago, she named Kevin Bethel as her police commissioner.

Parker becomes mayor on New Year’s Day and will be sworn in at an inaugural City Council ceremony on Jan. 2.

Platt and Harris were the two top campaign staffers in Parker’s historic victory, in which she emerged from a crowded Democratic primary field in May and cruised to victory in the general election. Parker will be Philadelphia’s 100th mayor, and the first woman to lead the city.

Thurman, who didn’t work on Parker’s campaign, will leave her current role as vice president of government affairs and social responsibility at the Greater Philadelphia YMCA to join the administration.

Thurman met Parker when they were both earning master’s degrees at the University of Pennsylvania. When Parker chaired the Philadelphia delegation to the State House, she appointed Thurman to be the delegation’s executive director. She then worked as chief of staff to the parks and recreation department during Kenney’s first term, when she was involved in the early stages of the mayor’s signature Rebuild program to renovate city rec centers.

» READ MORE: Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker has tapped Kevin Bethel for police commissioner

Thurman, Harris, and Platt will lead the administration’s strategic and political efforts, such as proposing major policy initiatives and crafting a plan to enact them. Parker has not yet named a managing director, who will oversee department heads and is essentially the city’s chief operating officer.

In some past administrations, one staffer was seen as the main conduit for reaching the mayor. Most famously, former Mayor Ed Rendell worked hand in glove with his chief of staff, David L. Cohen.

Parker and her team say they are intentionally creating a more diffuse power structure at the top of the administration.

“This is a new way of thinking about things,” said Platt, a veteran political consultant who also worked as an executive at La Colombe. “Oftentimes you see there is a single person with a position of great power. And sometimes it works, but other times it doesn’t and it’s not diverse and it becomes too singular in its focus.”

Harris, a former executive director of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, said there won’t be a pecking order among the three aides.

“There isn’t a hierarchy between the three of us,” Harris said. “There is parity.”

Each will have distinct portfolios. Thurman’s will include policy development and implementation, crisis management, budget oversight, and “large-scale strategic planning,” she said.

Harris, who helped lead President Joe Biden’s Pennsylvania campaign in 2020, will take the lead on the administration’s relationships with municipal labor unions, City Council, and other levels of government. She will also oversee work on climate change initiatives and on planning for the major events scheduled for 2026, when Philly will host the nation’s 250th anniversary as well as World Cup games.

Platt’s portfolio will include overseeing city planning and real estate development issues, developing technological solutions for improving city services, and other major initiatives, he said.