“You’re a visionary for your district.” Q&A with New York State Assembly Chief of Staff Anna Myers
By Carla Sinclair, Senior Communications Associate
Chiefs of staff and other legislative office leaders are crucial to the districts they serve, but often operate behind the scenes. ISLG’s Kriegel Fellowship for Public Service Leaders taps into their unique roles to offer professional development and networking opportunities so they can exceed in their current jobs and their future journeys as policy experts. We sat down with one of the Fellows to discuss the role, what Kriegel has offered, the importance of state and local collaboration, and much more.
Whether they’re drafting legislation, tackling policy issues, or out listening to their communities, the chiefs of staff and other legislative office leaders play a vital role in New York City and State. With roles as diverse in responsibilities as the array of public policy issues they delve into, these staff need to be policy experts, legislative wonks, effective managers, and much more.
To support their success as a legislative champion as well as a community advocate, CUNY ISLG established the Kriegel Fellowship for Public Service Leaders in 2020 as a professional development and peer-to-peer learning opportunity for legislative chiefs of staff. The Fellowship has expanded to help all legislative office leaders gain insight into the pressures that influence policy decision-making, enhance their policy knowledge and leadership capacities, and collaborate with peers to more positively impact the future of New York City and State.
ISLG’s Senior Communications Associate, Carla Sinclair, sat down with Kriegel Fellow Anna Myers who works as the Chief of Staff the New York State Assembly Member Alex Bores, to talk about it all.
What is your name and role? What neighborhoods do you serve?
I'm Anna Myers, and my role is Chief of Staff to Assembly Member Alex Bores, which is District 73. We represent all the way from Murray Hill up to the 90s of the Upper East Side.
Tell me more about what your job entails. What does it look like day-to-day, or week-to-week?
My job is to be an aligned problem solver. I believe that chiefs of staff should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their principal, but then you go off in a “Y” each day, so you cover every area. My goal is to ensure everything is moving—and if there are roadblocks, I spot it long before anybody else in the team, so that I can rearrange things and clear them. My role is to be strategic, a problem solver, and a project manager all at once.
“My role is to be strategic, a problem solver, and a project manager all at once.”
Any given day, I’m looking several months in advance for our team. I need to be across everything that my principal is focused on achieving, as well as what they wanted to complete the last few days and couldn’t because, maybe, session changed around, or something else popped up. I’m the one making sure balls didn't land on the ground and momentum doesn’t stall.
I think the first half of the year is always a little bit tiring for teams, because you're split between the district and the capital, so you're working to ensure that everybody's in constant communication. Our team has a daily standup. I think it comes from the Assembly Member I both coming from the startup world—we find it so valuable to align the team at the start of the day. I think it helps show a small team of people what each person is juggling and removes opportunity for friction. It shows here's where scheduling is at, and here's what legislation is focused on. Here’s everything that's going on in the district. Here’s everything going on for our constituents.
Why is this role important?
People often mistake a chief of staff role as only being “the boots on the ground” keeping everything going. That role is important, but I think the most important thing for a chief of staff is to be visionary. You're a visionary for your district, because you've heard what constituents want and need; you're a visionary for what can be better, where things can be improved. You're a visionary for your leader, because you’re not only focused on where they're at now, but where they want to be in three months, 12 months, 18 months, and even 10 years. My role is to constantly hold on to the vision ahead while keeping momentum in the now.
“You're a visionary for your district, because you've heard what constituents want and need; you're a visionary for what can be better, where things can be improved.”
How did you come to be in public service?
I dreamed of being on the political side of public service when I was a kiddo. And then my life took a lot of detours, and I ended up in not-for-profit, then in consumer business—B2B and B2C—and then to tech and venture capital. It was then the Assembly Member, who I had worked with in tech, reached out that he had a gap in his team, and was wondering if I was interested in filling it. I decided to dip my toes in the water and see what's happening.
What parallels do you see, working in both tech and in public service?
I'm really curious about the intersection of the chief of staff role in the private sector and in the public sector. I think there's a real opportunity for the designs of the role to overlap. In the private sector, a chief of staff is working with your C-suite and your executive, keeping everything going. You're constantly project managing and everything's about keeping money coming in and knowing when to spend money to make things run smoother. In the public sector, you're working with your leader, you're managing teams, and you're doing everything at a really low expense. You're not looking at dollar signs, you're looking at, “How can we help our constituents? How can we help our district?”
I think there's a real opportunity for them to come together to pool resources and experiences. The private sector usually has access to more resources, and they can share, “Here's how much this tool costs and why it works.” For the public side to say, “Here's what it looks like to work with everyday people who we represent, here's how we do dialogue, here's how we listen, here's how we action.” I think having those conversations could improve a lot of opportunities across the state.
In businesses, they say the customer is number one, and they are! They are the ones that keep a business moving. But in the public sector, a constituent is not a customer. They're human beings that we've agreed to come to work for every day and help ensure that everything they need is available and functioning.
Why did you decide to be a Kriegel Fellow?
Not coming from public service, and this being my first time involved in it, I was really excited about the opportunity to learn about how things work within the public space. As a New York State Assembly chief of staff, I represent a Manhattan district, so I need to understand how New York City Council works. Kriegel allows me the opportunity to learn about and build relationships across City Council in parallel. I really appreciated the space to dive into the details that, as a chief of staff to a NYS legislator, we don't always get to be in.
How has your experience in this Cohort been so far?
ISLG has done a really amazing job at creating a fellowship experience that's focused on public-service chief of staffs where every week, you come away with skills and knowledge that will benefit us long-term throughout our careers. And I think the number one part of that is the open dialogue—like, being able to learn how the New York City budget works, learn how offices function, learn how people communicate, learn how when someone says this, they actually mean that. Those are skills that will be with us forever.
“Being able to learn how the New York City budget works, learn how offices function, learn how people communicate, learn how when someone says this, they actually mean that. Those are skills that will be with us forever.”
A particularly interesting workshop we did recently was on AI. AI is a conversation that we are having every day in every place, wherever you work. AI is a conversation that people are having over drinks, about what parts people feel safe with and where they don't. The opportunity to sit in a room of chiefs having that conversation and having the Manhattan Borough President share how they use it, their guidelines on how their office uses it, and their relationship to it, was really valuable.
What does it mean to have this community of legislative staff members from other offices, both as cohort colleagues and Fellowship alumni?
If you don't have the community of other chiefs of staff, it can be a lonely role really quickly. Your top priority, in my opinion, is to be a very detailed person on what your principal wants and needs and where they're going. It's also to be a leader and manager of a small office, and it’s been a huge help to build that community across chiefs of staffs in Senate and State Assembly. Kriegel creates a space where people can communicate and engage in conversation while understanding the healthy boundaries to have within that conversation. A chief of staff will never put you in a position to overstep the trust of your principal, because they understand that trust is the number one thing to maintain an effective office for your constituents.
“Kriegel creates a space where people can communicate and engage in conversation while understanding the healthy boundaries to have within that conversation.”
Do you think it’s important to have learning and networking opportunities for public service leaders? Why?
Definitely. You can end up in a bubble really quickly, either by choice or by accident. To avoid the bubble, this Fellowship and its networking space creates an experience where you're in constant dialogue across environments that you don't always work with. In my district, of course, I'm in conversations with the Council Members I overlap with, with the Senators, the Congress members, and their staff. But these types of networking spaces evolve the conversation beyond those lines into other regions of the city and the state that you don't normally end up in conversation with.
And it's really interesting. It's been fun to run into other chief and ask, “Oh, what is your team working on this week? What's going on in your district?” And you learn and grow from each other.
What is something you wish people knew about the folks who work behind the scenes in legislative offices like you?
The one thing I wish people knew is that we're small teams delivering probably three times the size of what a private sector team is delivering, with that same amount of people. That's not saying that the private sector is slow and lazy—it's that in the public sector, we have to respect the tax dollars that pay us to be there, and we have to constantly show up every day to make sure things are moving and happening. And it's important to us that we are constantly delivering above and beyond. I really think that that can be something that's forgotten quickly.
“The one thing I wish people knew is that we're small teams delivering probably three times the size of what a private sector team is delivering, with that same amount of people.”
I also think that people forget the humanness of public service. When I was in the private sector, one thing that remained important to me was that everybody understood the partnership of the employee-employer relationship. I think that that creates a really human experience. I want our office to have that relationship with our constituents—constantly being aware of what people are coming into each day, and having those conversations to show, “They're showing up to get this done, and I want to partner with them in it.”
I’m so deeply impressed by our team. They have an amazing talent to remember people, events, and details from years past. It’s part of what empowers them to be effective in their work today. They’re not skills that everybody carries. And that applies to so many people in public service—I'm constantly impressed by how much all staffers can remember about their district constituents and the legislators they work with every day.
Image provided by Anna Myers, designed by Carla Sinclair.