Paul Bass Photo
Tom Goldenberg at WNHH FM.
ECA. To an ashram. To the bar at Pacifico. To McKinsey & Company. To … New Haven City Hall?
That would make for a first-of-its-kind career path in New Haven.
That would be Tom Goldenberg’s path if he succeeds in becoming New Haven’s next mayor.
Goldenberg, 40, is winding down his “engagement manager” job at the McKinsey consulting firm. He is expected to file papers next week as a Democratic candidate for mayor in the 2023 election. He’ll take on incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker, who is seeking a third two-year term; two other New Haveners, community organizer and retired police Sgt. Shafiq Abdussabur and former federal prosecutor and current Hartford inspector general Liam Brennan, are also expected to launch campaigns next month.
Goldenberg, who lives on Nicoll Street, has been meeting with politically active New Haveners across town for months about his likely campaign for mayor. He was asked during an appearance Thursday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program why he is interested in running for the position — rather than starting out running for, say, alder.
He responded that leaving McKinsey will leave him without a full-time salary.
“For me to give up my job that is supporting my family, I need to be able to at least replace it with a salary,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say it’s just the salary. It’s also the level of impact. As a mayor I think you can do some very exciting things. I flirted with the idea of being a comptroller or something like that. You just have more breadth to create meaningful changes. A lot of these problems are so interconnected as well.” (Goldenberg asked after this article was published to add that being an alder would present a conflict of interest and the mayor’s job would offer the best role for addressing urgent issues like education.)
Some people have also asked him if he has enough experience in New Haven to qualify for the job.
He responded on “Dateline” that he has been involved in the city since he was a kid growing in West Haven. He said he and father used to bring bread to the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen’s (DESK) then-location on Orange Street. He learned jazz piano with Warren Byrd in high school when he spent his afternoons as a student at Educational Center for the Arts (ECA) on Audubon Street.
He spent his 20s doing service work, doing yoga and meditating, and mastering Sanskrit and Malayalam on an ashram in southern India. He returned to Connecticut and lived for a few years in Westville. During that time he bartended downtown at Pacifico and waitered at Thali.
He and his wife then moved to New York, where Goldenberg learned computer coding, helped start a tech company, launched his own stock-trading-advice firm (which eventually closed), then went into consulting. He landed at McKinsey, where he has worked on issues ranging from public education to sanitation. In an MBA program at Columbia, he befriended former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who he said has become a political mentor whose successes he would seek to emulate as New Haven’s chief elected official.
Goldenberg’s family returned to town four and a half years ago, settling in the East Rock neighborhood. He has since joined the board at DESK.
“I do have a lot of experience working on relevant topics in my current work” that a New Haven mayor tackles, including K‑12 education, workforce development, and inclusive growth, he said.
So far Goldenberg has spoken most in campaign conversations about the state of public education in New Haven.
“I think New Haven currently faces a crisis of leadership,” he said.
“What do I mean by that? You look at education. You see that last year we had the worst chronic absenteeism in the state of Connecticut. Almost six out of eight students were chronically absent. Eight of 10 third-graders are below grade level for reading.
“What I would want to have is an administration that truly cares about and is hands on with public education. What do I mean by that? Showing teachers the respect that they deserve. Engaging with families and students… Ensuring that there is rigor and there is accountability, and transparency in district leadership.”
Mayor Elicker was asked Thursday afternoon about that critique. He responded by citing his administration’s just-announced math and literacy initiative, its recently Board of Education-approved contract raising teacher salaries, and the opening of youth and community centers in city park buildings across town. He also spoke of “never seeing” Goldenberg at public meetings “until he started running for mayor.”
“These issues are very, very challenging. I and my team have worked very hard to be present and confront them head on,” Elicker said. “We lost a 16-year-old boy, Joshua Vazquez, earlier this week. We have challenges around youth and education that are deep and we all are very committed to addressing them.”
Click on the video above to watch the full conversation with Tom Goldenberg on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”
Click here to subscribe to “Dateline New Haven” and here to subscribe to other WNHH FM podcasts.