Kathryn Wylde to Retire as CEO at Partnership for NYC

Kathryn Wylde — who long fought for the interests of the business community in the city — will retire from her role as president and CEO of nonprofit Partnership for New York City.

Wylde announced Thursday that she will step down next year from the partnership, a consortium of 350 corporations, law firms and banks that has become a “pillar” of government in the city, after 25 years with the organization, The New York Times reported.

The Wisconsin native, who will turn 79 next month, plans to help the organization find a successor, as it’s “time for younger leadership,” she told the Times.

A spokesperson for the partnership did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wylde started with the partnership in 1981 but took the role of CEO in 2000.

During her long tenure at the nonprofit’s helm, Wylde advised mayoral administrations, state tax policy and citywide zoning regulations, as well as powerful billionaires and political leaders.

That included privately financing the construction of 40,000 new housing units on city-owned land in the 1980s, designing the blueprint for stabilizing Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, guiding City Hall through Mayor Eric Adams’s federal indictment and trying to keep the city’s congestion pricing program, despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to kill it, the Times reported.

The partnership, which has about $10 million in annual revenue and also runs a “civic-minded” investment fund and research arm, has faced some opposition.

Critics of Wylde have previously claimed that she helped the mega-rich “burnish their reputations,” and the partnership has opposed raising the city’s minimum wage and raising taxes on the rich, according to the Times.

The nonprofit’s work to help the city’s housing affordability crisis has also been “limited,” the Times reported.

Still, Wylde has been persistent in her belief that New York City needs to “stay attractive” to businesses and billionaires, whose taxes “solve problems government cannot alone,” according to the Times. And Wylde said her successor needs to be as tough as she is.

“The most important thing for anybody in my job is to understand that this is a bottom-up, not a top-down city,” she told the Times. “My fear is that finding somebody who shares that perspective is hard.”

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.