Gale A. Brewer represents the 6th Council District and chairs the Committee on Oversight and Investigations. The committee has a far reaching mandate to examine the mayoral administration, its policies, and delivery of city services. Under her leadership, the committee held oversight hearings on costs of the migrant crisis, responses to climate emergencies, proliferation of unlicensed cannabis shops, operational challenges in family court, maintaining the municipal workforce, and many others. Council Member Brewer is a member of the Budget Negotiation Team as well as the Committees on Finance, Higher Education, Immigration, Consumer and Worker Protection, Governmental Operations, and Rules, Privileges, and Elections. She recently passed bills to prevent lithium-ion battery fires, expand the city’s tree canopy, and protect hourly workers.

As Borough President, she submitted over 190 ULURP recommendations; allocated $213 million in capital funds (and more in operational and cultural dollars) to non-profits, schools, and parks; secured a competitive grant of $20 million from the State of New York for revitalization of Chinatown; appointed over 1000 people every year to Community Boards, school boards as well as many other boards and trained them in ethics, land use, budgeting, open data, proposal writing, conflict resolution, and other issues; and opened the first storefront district office for the Borough President on 125th Street in Harlem. She convened task forces on construction safety, African immigrants, small business, faith-based entities and real estate, affordable housing, the closing of Rikers Island jails and other matters.

Before being elected Borough President, she represented the 6th Council District from 2002-2013. Her legislative highlights included laws guaranteeing paid sick leave for most hourly employees, requiring all City data be published online, and protecting domestic workers from abusive practices.

Prior to elected office, she served as Chief of Staff to Council Member Ruth Messinger, NYC Deputy Public Advocate, Director of the city’s Federal Office, and Executive Director of the Mayor’s Commission on the Status of Women. She worked on a research project regarding non-profits at the CUNY Graduate Center, and she worked for a private firm that focused on creating affordable housing.

For many years, Gale Brewer has taught at CUNY and Barnard College.

Brewer has an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and did her undergraduate work at Columbia University and Bennington College. She lives with her husband Cal Snyder, and they have a grown son. In the past, she had many foster children.