New York City has finally found its long-awaited rat czar.
Kathleen Corradi, a land use expert who specializes in urban sustainability and currently works at the Department of Education, will lead the city’s efforts to deal with the growing rodent population, Mayor Adams announced Wednesday.
The mayor, who has been on the hunt since November for a candidate to take on the top pest extermination job, unveiled the appointment of Corradi during a morning press conference in Harlem’s St. Nicholas Park.
Corradi has been at the Department of Education since November 2015. She served as the department’s sustainability manager until November 2021, when she was promoted to become its director of space planning, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Her resume also includes serving as a garden coordinator at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for a year, and she holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s in urban sustainability from the City College of New York.
While Corradi’s past merits do not appear to be strictly focused on rat mitigation, she has earned accolades for operating in that field, city records show.
A 2018-2019 report from the Department of Education lists Corradi as winning a “Neighborhood Rat Reduction Award” that year as part of her work in the agency’s Office of Sustainability.
The Corradi appointment comes nearly three weeks after Adams told reporters he had made up his mind about who to hire as “rat czar,” a post formally called director of rodent mitigation.
Corradi is expected to lead the Adams administration’s war on rats — a pet project priority for the mayor, who frequently lets the public know how much he despises the four-legged pests. His obsession with slaying rodents took a particularly bizarre twist earlier this year, when he had to fend off summonses for a rat infestation at his Brooklyn rowhouse.
It was not immediately clear how much Corradi will earn in her new post, but a job posting lists the salary range between $120,000 and $170,000. She will report directly to Deputy Mayor of Operations Meera Joshi.
Some controversy over the czar post erupted last month after it emerged that the Department of Health already has a full-time director of pest control services, Ricky Simeone.
Critics suggested it seems redundant to have both a director of rodent mitigation and a director of pest control services, especially at a time that Adams is ordering budget cuts at a variety of city agencies.
Adams’ office has defended keeping both jobs on the books, saying they are distinct from each other in that the czar will “be in charge of setting and executing strategy,” while Simeone’s job focuses on “identifying and fixing conditions that make life easy for rats.”