Jeff Merritt

Jeff Merritt
Portrait photograph of Jeff S. Merritt
Jeff S. Merritt, 2017
Born
Jeff Scott Merritt

1978 (age 47–48)
Education
OccupationsNonprofit executive, government official
EmployerWorld Economic Forum
TitleHead, Centre for Urban Transformation, World Economic Forum
Spouse
Kristyn Pomranz
​
(m. 2017)​

Jeff Merritt (born 1978) is an American executive whose work has focused on urban development, public-private collaboration, economic resilience, smart cities and emerging technologies. He joined the World Economic Forum in 2017 where he headed the Centre for Urban Transformation and was a member of the organisation's executive committee[1][2] He was previously Director of Innovation for the City of New York under Mayor Bill de Blasio, and before entering city government founded Grassroots Initiative, a New York nonprofit that assisted first-time and minority candidates for local office.[3][4]

Early life

Merritt graduated from the University of Michigan and received a master's degree in international and public affairs from Columbia University.[5][6]

Career

Early Career

Merritt worked in Michigan state government in the 1990s before seeking work overseas.[4] He went on to work with U.S. State Department-sponsored democracy programmes in Eastern Europe, including in Croatia and Albania.[5][7]

From 2003 to 2005 Merritt was executive director of the Center for Civic Responsibility, a nonprofit based in Metuchen, New Jersey that worked to promote government reform and civic engagement.[8][9] He contributed a chapter on funders' priorities and the local realities of transition programming to Transacting Transition: The Micropolitics of Democracy Assistance in the Former Yugoslavia, published by Kumarian Press in 2006.[10][11]

Grassroots Initiative

In 2005 Merritt founded Grassroots Initiative, a New York nonprofit that billed itself as the first not-for-profit political consulting firm and sought to give underrepresented groups and political outsiders easier access to the electoral process.[5] As its president he advised first-time candidates on ballot access, strategy and voter outreach.[12][13]

Under Merritt the organisation worked with five Sikh candidates who won seats on the Queens County Democratic Committee in the September 2006 primary, which The New York Times reported as the first time Sikhs had been elected to public office anywhere in the city. In the September 2006 primary, five Sikh candidates the organisation had worked with were elected to the Queens County Democratic Committee, which The New York Times reported as the first time Sikhs had been elected to public office anywhere in the city.[13][14]

Merritt directed the organisation's work under a 2009 contract with the New York City Department of Education engaged Grassroots Initiative to recruit candidates and encourage parents to take part in elections for the city's community and citywide education councils, which election officials billed as the first exclusively online public election in the United States.[7][15]

Office of the Public Advocate

Merritt served as a senior adviser to Bill de Blasio at the Office of the New York City Public Advocate,[16] where he led the office's open government and technology initiatives.[17] These included an online watchlist of landlords with the worst housing code violation records, later linked from apartment listings on Craigslist, and an investigation into city agencies' compliance with New York State's Freedom of Information Law.[18][19][20]

He also headed the Coalition for Accountability in Political Spending,[21] an affiliated nonprofit founded by de Blasio in 2010 as a bipartisan group of elected officials pressing for greater transparency in corporate political spending.[22]

Mayor's Office of Technology and Innovation

After de Blasio was elected Mayor of New York City, Merritt joined the mayor's office as a senior adviser and helped establish the Mayor's Office of Technology and Innovation in 2014.[2][3] He was subsequently appointed the city's Director of Innovation, holding the post until 2017, and was credited with leading much of the city's work on emerging technologies and data-driven practice.[4][2]

In 2014 Merritt led Tech for Universal Pre-K, which brought Google and other technology firms together with city agencies to plan enrolment for the mayor's universal pre-kindergarten programme; about 53,000 children were enrolled.[23][4] He headed the rollout of the .nyc top-level domain, a project begun under the Bloomberg administration.[24] A related site, neighborhoods.nyc, launched in 2015 to collate municipal data for more than 400 neighbourhoods.[25]

Merritt argued for replacing prescriptive procurement with open-ended "calls for innovation" that asked firms to propose solutions rather than answer detailed specifications.[16][26] The city used that method for its payphone replacement scheme, which became LinkNYC, announced in November 2014 and funded by advertising at no cost to taxpayers.[27][2] In 2015 the city engaged the procurement platform Citymart to run five such challenges, and Merritt also worked on a broadband programme providing wireless corridors in underserved areas and free internet access for residents of public housing.[28][29]

Under Merritt the office published guidelines on the deployment of internet of things technologies, which were subsequently followed by other American cities.[30] He was also involved in establishing the city's Neighborhood Innovation Labs, which sought to involve residents in identifying local problems that technology might address.[31]

In November 2016 New York was named Best Smart City at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona for the office's Building a Smart + Equitable City initiative. Merritt said that internet of things devices used effectively could produce cost savings and strengthen public health and safety, but that municipal leaders also needed to mitigate the risks such technologies posed to privacy and security.[32][33]

World Economic Forum

In November 2017 Merritt left City Hall to join the World Economic Forum in San Francisco, leading its work on the internet of things within the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.[2][34]

In 2019 the Forum became secretariat of the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance, a grouping of city networks and technology governance organisations launched under Japan's presidency of the G20 to set shared norms for smart city technologies.[35][36] Merritt, then the Forum's head of internet of things, robotics and smart cities, described the launch as a first step towards wider adoption of good practice and greater public confidence in how data is gathered in public places.[37][38] When the alliance published a policy roadmap in 2020 covering privacy, cybersecurity, broadband access and open data, which 36 cities agreed to pilot, he said most cities lacked the capacity to work through the complexity of such deployments, leaving officials either stalled or taking a gamble.[39]

Merritt was among the authors of Governing Smart Cities, a 2021 Forum report with Deloitte surveying officials in 36 cities, which found that fewer than a quarter carried out privacy impact assessments.[40] He also led the Forum's Global IoT Council, which in December 2020 published a study of governance problems in connected technologies alongside an agreement among seven countries to help innovators navigate regulation across their markets.[41]

In August 2021 the Forum announced a Global Centre for Urban Transformation headquartered in Detroit with Merritt leading the initiative.[1] The Centre was established to increase public-private collaboration and advance more inclusive and sustainable models for urban development.[42][43]

During Merritt's leadership, the Centre's work included sustainable urban development, local economic resilience and the built environment.[44] In 2023 Switzerland launched the Davos Baukultur Alliance in partnership with the World Economic Forum, bringing together public, private and civil-society organizations around the development of high-quality, sustainable places. Merritt later represented the Alliance at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.[45]

The Forum launched Yes SF in 2023 with Deloitte, Salesforce and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, backing environmentally focused startups as part of an effort to revive the city's downtown, with Merritt as its public face for the Forum.[46][47] Fourteen companies were selected in the first cohort and twelve in a second announced in 2025, by which time eleven of the first group had deployed products in the city. The model subsequently expanded as Yes/Cities, a place-based initiative designed to mobilize investment, strengthen local innovation ecosystems and create economic opportunity. Yes/Bengaluru launched in November 2025, followed by Yes/Boston in February 2026, with further expansion planned.[48] [49]

Selected publications

  • Merritt, Jeff S. (2006). "Quick Impact, Slow Recovery? Funders' Priorities and the Local Realities of Transition Programming". In Brown, Keith (ed.). Transacting Transition: The Micropolitics of Democracy Assistance in the Former Yugoslavia. Bloomfield, Connecticut: Kumarian Press. ISBN 978-1-56549-222-6. OCLC 65400474.
  • Kontokosta, Constantine E.; Merritt, Jeff; Dolder, Sander (2018). "Solving City Challenges through Neighborhood Innovation Labs: Moving from Smart Cities to Informed Communities". In Corrêa d'Almeida, André (ed.). Smarter New York City: How City Agencies Innovate. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-18375-8.

Personal life

In August 2017, Merritt married Kristyn Pomranz, a writer and editor, in Sheffield, Massachusetts.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 "Leadership and governance". World Economic Forum. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Wood, Colin (November 27, 2017). "NYC innovation director Jeff Merritt moves on". StateScoop. Archived from the original on December 6, 2017. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  3. 1 2 Cole, Samantha (May 30, 2017). "NYC's Innovation Director Has a Mission to Fight Inequality". Motherboard. Vice Media. Archived from the original on December 30, 2017. Retrieved August 19, 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Neubauer, Miranda (December 5, 2014). "City official cites pre-K as proof of ability to 'disrupt'". Capital New York. Archived from the original on December 22, 2014. Retrieved August 19, 2026 – via Politico.
  5. 1 2 3 "Image Makers: Grassroots Initiative Seeks to Mow Down Establishment Politics". City & State. June 13, 2008. Archived from the original on December 22, 2014. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  6. 1 2 "Kristyn Pomranz, Jeff Merritt". Weddings. The New York Times. August 13, 2017. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  7. 1 2 Freeman, Jennifer (February 23, 2009). "CEC Q&A: promoting democracy at home". InsideSchools. Center for New York City Affairs, The New School. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  8. ↑ "About Jeff". jeffmerritt.info. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  9. ↑ Josephson, Paul P. "Navigating the Pay to Play Morass". Hill Wallack. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  10. ↑ Merritt, Jeff S. (2006). "Quick Impact, Slow Recovery? Funders' Priorities and the Local Realities of Transition Programming". In Brown, Keith (ed.). Transacting Transition: The Micropolitics of Democracy Assistance in the Former Yugoslavia. Bloomfield, Connecticut: Kumarian Press. ISBN 978-1-56549-222-6. OCLC 65400474.
  11. ↑ "Transacting Transition". Muabet. Watson Institute, Brown University. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  12. ↑ Montalbano, Elizabeth (February 22, 2007). "Social Networks Key to 2008 Race". PC World. Archived from the original on December 22, 2014. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  13. 1 2 Gohil, Neha Singh (October 15, 2006). "Politics, Spoken in Punjabi". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on March 2, 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  14. ↑ Solomont, Elizabeth (September 21, 2006). "Sikhs Rising In Queens Political Fray". The New York Sun. Archived from the original on December 22, 2014. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  15. ↑ Roberts, Sam (March 14, 2009). "Parent Voting for School Councils Is Moving Online". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 9, 2017. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  16. 1 2 Dunlap, David W. (April 30, 2014). "The 21st Century Is Calling, With Wi-Fi Hot Spots". Building Blocks. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 30, 2017. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  17. ↑ Meriwether, Kristen (April 4, 2014). "De Blasio Making Progress On Embracing Tech Sector". City & State. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  18. ↑ Chapman, Ben; Einhorn, Erin (August 30, 2010). "New website aims to shine light on city's worst slumlords". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on November 11, 2013. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  19. ↑ Chen, David W. (April 3, 2011). "Identifying City's Worst Landlords via Craigslist, and Trying to Penalize Them". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on April 1, 2018. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  20. ↑ Taylor, Kate (October 19, 2011). "De Blasio Pushes on Information Requests". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 2, 2012. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  21. ↑ Rice, Andrew (September 6, 2013). "Landlords Who Reap Millions From City Housing Homeless Bet Big on De Blasio". New York. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  22. ↑ Beckel, Michael (March 1, 2013). "NYC public advocate: State, local governments must lead efforts to regulate dark money". Center for Public Integrity. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  23. ↑ Flamm, Matthew (March 31, 2014). "Google, other techies to help roll out pre-K". Crain's New York Business. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  24. ↑ Wisnieski, Adam (May 18, 2014). "Everything Dot NYC". Gotham Gazette. Archived from the original on October 18, 2014. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  25. ↑ Herzenberg, Michael (October 14, 2015). "New City Website Puts Info About Every Neighborhood a Click Away". NY1. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  26. ↑ Leber, Jessica (October 19, 2016). "How New York City is working to merge government with innovation". Fast Company. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  27. ↑ Miller, Ross; Seifert, Dan (November 17, 2014). "New York City is building 10,000 internet pylons for free public Wi-Fi". The Verge. Archived from the original on December 19, 2014. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  28. ↑ Neubauer, Miranda (August 18, 2015). "City hires firm to help rethink its procurement approach". Politico New York. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  29. ↑ Fleming, Wilder (August 11, 2015). "Broadband on the Block: What would it take to hook up the whole city?". New York Nonprofit Media. City & State. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  30. ↑ Wheelwright, Geof (March 21, 2017). "Big cities see early benefits from the Internet of Things, and grapple with ongoing challenges". GeekWire. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  31. ↑ Kontokosta, Constantine E.; Merritt, Jeff; Dolder, Sander (2018). "Solving City Challenges through Neighborhood Innovation Labs: Moving from Smart Cities to Informed Communities". In Corrêa d'Almeida, André (ed.). Smarter New York City: How City Agencies Innovate. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-18375-8.
  32. ↑ Michell, Nick (November 23, 2016). "New York awarded 2016 Best Smart City". Cities Today. Archived from the original on January 9, 2017. Retrieved August 19, 2026.
  33. ↑ Curry, David (November 29, 2016). "Who's better than New York? No one, says smart city group". ReadWrite. Archived from the original on January 9, 2017. Retrieved August 19, 2026.
  34. ↑ Captain, Sean (January 23, 2018). "How the World Economic Forum is tackling the dangers of big tech". Fast Company. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  35. ↑ "World Economic Forum to Lead G20 Smart Cities Alliance on Technology Governance" (Press release). World Economic Forum. June 27, 2019. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  36. ↑ "India joins global alliance on responsible use of smart city technologies". The Times of India. Press Trust of India. October 11, 2019. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  37. ↑ "Unprecedented Global Alliance for Smart City Technology Launched to Counter Growing Tensions" (Press release). World Economic Forum. October 11, 2019. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  38. ↑ "World Economic Forum unveils smart cities alliance". Port Technology International. October 11, 2019. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  39. ↑ Wray, Sarah (November 18, 2020). "36 cities adopt policy roadmap for ethical use of data and technology". Cities Today. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  40. ↑ Plautz, Jason (July 15, 2021). "Global cities still falling short on governance of smart city tech: report". Smart Cities Dive. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  41. ↑ Schenker, Jennifer L. (December 11, 2020). "Designing the future of the connected world". The Innovator. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  42. ↑ Rafter, Dan (September 2, 2021). "The Centre for Urban Transformation and Detroit: Ready to play a key role in shaping the future of cities". Midwest Real Estate News. REJournals. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  43. ↑ "New Global Centre for Urban Transformation Coming To Detroit". Detroit Today. WDET. August 25, 2021. Archived from the original on July 21, 2022. Retrieved August 19, 2026.
  44. ↑ "Berset veut faire de la culture du bâti un outil pour le climat". Swissinfo (in French). Keystone-ATS. January 15, 2023. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  45. ↑ "Discover the Full List of Special Projects and Participants of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale". ArchDaily. 2025. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  46. ↑ Katsuyama, Jana (December 7, 2023). "YesSF launches initiative to bring 14 innovators to revitalize downtown SF". KTVU. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  47. ↑ Hoge, Patrick (April 18, 2024). "Can eco-entrepreneurs save downtown San Francisco and the world?". San Francisco Examiner. Retrieved August 20, 2026.
  48. ↑ Lopez, Nadia (April 22, 2025). "How San Francisco is leading the nation in climate tech". Axios San Francisco. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
  49. ↑ Katsuyama, Jana (April 25, 2025). "San Francisco unveils 1st EV curbside charging stations through grant program". KTVU. Retrieved August 23, 2026.
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