As Met Council’s Chief Operating Officer, Rob Newman is responsible for overseeing and ensuring best internal practices for the organization’s operations. In this role, Rob also focuses on public policy and community needs to help identify and support policy changes that can advance Met Council’s mission to help the neediest New Yorkers. Rob has over two decades of management and policy development experience in the non-profit and government arenas.

Before joining Met Council, Rob worked at the New York City Council for over twenty years, where he served as Counsel to two City Council Speakers and was a top aide and principal adviser on legislative, oversight and policy matters. Rob also helped develop and carry out the Speaker’s legislative agenda. Most recently, Rob spearheaded the Speaker’s efforts to build the Council’s oversight capacity by creating and managing the Council Oversight and Investigation Unit, which uncovered seriously hazardous conditions in the city’s public housing stock. Rob also drafted legislation to create a Charter Revision Commission tasked with reviewing and recommending changes to the City Charter, the city’s foundational governing legal document.

Prior to his work in the Council, Rob was a Senior Staff Attorney at Gay Men’s Health Crisis, where he provided a wide array of legal services for people with HIV/AIDS and established financial and employment counseling programs designed to help clients re-enter the workforce after recovering from illness.

Rob earned his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and B.S. degree from New York University.