Mayor de Blasio Announces Minerva Tantoco as City’s First Ever Chief Technology Officer.

At the 10th anniversary of the NY Tech Meetup, Mayor de Blasio today announced the appointment of Minerva Tantoco as the City’s first ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO). For more than 25 years – from launching her own start-up to directing technology and innovation for large enterprises – Tantoco has worked to affect business transformation across a range of industries from advertising to finance. She brings this wealth of experience in technology-enabled transformation to government in joining the de Blasio administration.
 
As CTO, Tantoco will direct the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation, under First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris, with responsibility for the development and implementation of a coordinated citywide strategy on technology and innovation and encouraging collaboration across agencies and with the wider New York City technology ecosystem. In partnership with other senior administration officials, she will also engage with stakeholders in the tech sector and help encourage more public participation in government.

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Raised in Flushing, Queens, Tantoco is a product of New York City public schools. She attended Bronx Science High School and while still in college, moved to Silicon Valley where she co-founded technology startup, Manageware Inc, which was successfully sold five years later.
 
Since then, Ms. Tantoco has led emerging technology initiatives including artificial intelligence, e-commerce, virtualization, online marketing and mobile applications. Ms. Tantoco holds four US patents on intelligent workflow and is a speaker and author on mobile, security, big data, and innovation. As Senior Product Manager at Palm, Tantoco pioneered mobile enterprise solutions in the early 2000s which helped pave the path in mobile technology, developing and deploying some of the world’s earliest mobile applications. As Chief Architect at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Tantoco led the re-design and implementation of the company’s Investment Banking data warehouse, a project that mirrors many of the City’s big data and analytics initiatives.
 
Ms. Tantoco most recently served as UBS APAC CTO for client-facing technology and innovation, with regional responsibility for the Asia Pacific region. She currently holds four US patents in artificial intelligence and workflow systems. Tantoco lives in Greenwich Village and has one daughter.