Polly Trottenberg Named Dean of NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School

NYU President Linda G. Mills and Provost Georgina Dopico today announced the appointment of Polly Trottenberg—a former Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) and Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT), and a nationally recognized authority on transportation, infrastructure, and public policy and management—as dean of NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and a Global Distinguished Professor at NYU. 

Ms. Trottenberg takes up her new duties on August 1, 2025.

President Mills said, “Public service is a noble profession, and it is one of higher education’s principal aims to better the world in which we live by giving those drawn to public service the best and most effective education and training possible. Polly Trottenberg exemplifies the kind of successful, committed public servant that we look to the Wagner School to produce, and she will bring to the Wagner deanship the experience of someone who has demonstrated leadership in making use of research to develop impactful ideas and in turning those ideas into real policies that improve the lives of people every day. We are delighted to name her as dean of NYU Wagner.”

Ms. Trottenberg said, “I am deeply honored to join NYU’s Wagner School as its new dean, under the inspirational leadership of President Mills and Provost Dopico. At a time when public service and impactful academic scholarship are so essential, I look forward to working with the extraordinary faculty, students, staff, and alumni at Wagner, and across NYU, to educate the next generation of public service leaders and support the research that forms the basis for sound public policy.”

From April 2021 until January 2025, Polly Trottenberg served as the Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Transportation, making her the chief operating officer of a 57,000-person federal agency, where she helped oversee hundreds of billions of dollars of new investments in roads, bridges, transit, passenger and freight rail, airports and ports. Trottenberg also served in 2023 as the Acting Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, the federal government’s largest and most complex 24/7 operational agency, with 44,000 employees and hundreds of facilities across the US and overseas. Prior to USDOT, Trottenberg served for seven years as New York City’s Transportation Commissioner, steering the 5,800-person agency through an era of growth and innovation, as well as the challenges of COVID. She led the City’s Vision Zero initiative, the first in the US, a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and data-driven effort to reduce roadway fatalities. NYCDOT operates one of the US’s largest urban transportation systems, with 6,000 miles of roads, nearly 800 bridges, the nation’s largest traffic operation and parking system, the Staten Island Ferry, and extensive bicycle, pedestrian, and public plaza infrastructure. Between 2009 and 2014, she served first as Assistant Secretary and later Undersecretary of Transportation Policy at the USDOT. She previously spent 12 years on Capitol Hill, which was preceded by two years at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

She has served on numerous boards and commissions, including as a board member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, chair of the Union Station Development Commission, as co-chair and a member of the Northeast Corridor Commission, and as chair and member of TRANSCOM, a coalition of 16 transportation-related agencies in the New York metropolitan area.

Trottenberg received her BA in history from Barnard College, Columbia University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and her MPP from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.