The second Waterfront Alliance Achievement Award will be presented to Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller, at the 2025 Heroes of the Harbor gala on Oct. 15, 2025 at City Winery.
In his tenure in the New York City Council and as New York City Comptroller, Brad Lander has been a champion for embracing waterfronts and fighting climate change across New York City. Mr. Lander prioritized cleaning up the Gowanus Canal as part of the Gowanus rezoning when he was in the City Council, and has taken that spirit of clean, resilient, and publicly accessible waterfronts with him into the Comptroller’s Office. In the first few months as Comptroller, Mr. Lander launched the NYC Climate Dashboard, which tracks New York City’s progress in meeting its climate goals by assessing how effectively the city is reducing our carbon emissions and how prepared our neighborhoods are for the impacts of climate change. The Comptroller’s Office has also released valuable reports, such as Is New York City Ready for Rain? An Investigation into the City’s Flash Flood Preparedness, which have supported residents and advocates to hold city government accountable on climate adaptation.
More recently, Comptroller Lander stood with Waterfront Alliance at a public press conference urging legal action against the White House’s cuts to FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) Program, the nation’s preeminent resilient funding program. Since then, New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, has joined a multi-state lawsuit to fight the BRIC cuts. Comptroller Lander has also offered longstanding support and partnership with Waterfront Alliance on smart climate resilience legislation, including Flood Risk Disclosure, Local Law 122, and Rain Ready NY Act.
We are fortunate to have a champion for waterfronts and resilience in the New York City government and look forward to continuing to partner together in the future.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander
Comptroller Brad Lander serves as New York City’s chief financial officer, leading an office of roughly 800 public servants in their work to promote the financial health, integrity, and effectiveness of city government and secure a more thriving and sustainable future for all New Yorkers.
As investment advisor and custodian for the City’s public pension funds, Comptroller Lander stewards the retirement security of over 750,000 current and retired public sector workers, with a prudent, diversified, long-term approach to the City’s investments and obligations. Under Comptroller Lander’s leadership, three of the City’s funds have adopted a detailed plan to reach net zero emissions by 2040, among the most aggressive in the nation. The plan includes divesting from fossil fuels, engaging asset managers and portfolio companies toward decarbonization across the economy, and dramatically scaling up investments in climate solutions.
Comptroller Lander serves as the City’s budget watchdog and chief accountability officer. His audits revealed nearly a quarter of a billion dollars underreported in NYC Ferry expenditures, inadequate cost controls in Covid-19 emergency procurement, and the ineffectiveness of the City’s homeless sweeps.
Comptroller Lander’s team published the first detailed report on emergency shelter costs for asylum seekers and identified more effective strategies for addressing the humanitarian crisis. The office launched the Department of Correction Dashboard to provide much-needed transparency into City jails. And his initiative with Mayor Eric Adams to pay nonprofit human service providers on time has reduced nearly year-long payment delays.
As Comptroller, Lander has strengthened the office’s efforts to combat the climate crisis, create and preserve affordable housing, and protect workers. His Public Solar NYC plan includes an innovative “public option” to scale up rooftop solar and create good green jobs. Under his leadership, the NYC pension funds led shareholder advocacy through which most Starbucks investors voted for an independent review of the company’s labor and human rights policies and actions.
As part of his commitment to New York City’s thriving and sustainable future, Comptroller Lander is focused on improving the City’s public infrastructure. As of July 2023, Comptroller Lander has managed the issuance of a total of $7.8 billion in municipal bonds to invest in schools, parks, transportation, water and sewer, and climate resiliency projects. The office’s public finance work includes innovative social bonds and tender solicitations that have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in savings, even amid rising interest rates. Comptroller Lander also worked with the Adams Administration to improve the City’s capacity to ensure infrastructure projects are built on time and on-budget.
Prior to being elected Comptroller in 2021, Lander spent 12 years in the City Council, where he co-founded the Council’s Progressive Caucus and won transformative changes to expand workers’ rights, secure tenant protections, create affordable housing, integrate and strengthen the district’s public schools, and make streets safer. He served previously as the director of the Fifth Avenue Committee and the Pratt Center for Community Development.
Brad lives with his wife, Meg Barnette, in Brooklyn where they raised two children, Marek and Rosa, who still roll their eyes at his dad jokes.
