Crain’s New York Business: Who wields power in the big city?
December 13, 2021 7:30 AM
Identifying the most powerful people in a city such as New York can be maddening. The city is home to so many centers of globally recognized influence: finance and Broadway, publishing and politics, fashion, art, sports, cuisine.
For Crain’s staff, choosing the 25 Most Powerful New Yorkers became a task of narrowing a long list of spectacular names.
Power is not simply wealth, although wealth can be a factor. Power over others’ careers is a factor, as is the ability to get something going—or to bring it to a quick stop.
The internet has forced a broader definition of power by magnifying forms of social influence.
In future years, it’s likely that many of the names on this list will change. New York is undergoing a profound shuffling of the deck as we grapple with—and, with hope, emerge from—the Covid-19 pandemic.
So this list by necessity exists for just a moment in time. Next year there will be a different power calculus.
Join us as we celebrate those atop the pinnacle in 2021.
- Vijay Dandapani
Hotel Association of New York City CEO
The Hotel Association of New York City, which represents about 300 hotels with roughly 80,000 beds, just got a much-needed shot in the arm. As pandemic-related travel bans were being lifted, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a $450 million “Bring back tourism, bring back jobs” program that could help tens of thousands of sector employees.
Dandapani is bullish on the city’s hotel industry, which he said he expects to reach near normalcy in three to four years, as business travel and the convention and conference industry slowly recover.
A Cornell graduate, Dandapani was co-founder and president of Manhattan-based Apple Core Hotels from 1993 to 2016. The hospitality innovator in 2006 led the effort to publicize and confront the citywide problem of illegal hotels. He assumed his current role in 2017.