Mayor de Blasio refreshes administration’s tech leadership

Mayor Bill de Blasio has appointed two women to new, high-level tech jobs in the city. First, Minerva Tantoco was announced at the 10th Anniversary Meeting of the NY Tech Meetup as the new Chief Technology Officer for New York City.

Scratch that: the first Chief Technology Officer. Crazy, right?

A Queens native who graduated from Bronx Science, Tantoco just came back from a stint in Hong Kong working for UBS, a name you may remember from 2011’s Rogue Trader Scandal and one of the 29 banks on the most recent list of “Systematically Important Financial Institutions” from the Financial Stability Board (translation: Too Big To Fail). She also cofounded and successfully sold a startup shortly after finishing college, Manageware.

The mayor also announced the appointment of Kristen Titus to lead the NYC Tech Talent Pipeline, following two years as the executive director of Girls Who Code. The Mayor announced the Pipeline initiative during Internet Week this year, in July. It’s a plan to spend $10 million over three years to train New Yorkers for jobs in the innovation economy. It’s first sponsor was J.P. Morgan Chase, another Too Big To Fail bank, incidentally.