Jonathan B. Mintz

Jonathan Mintz is Founding President and Chief Executive Officer of the Cities for Financial Empowerment (CFE) Fund, a national non-profit organization that supports municipal efforts to help low-income families and individuals achieve long-term financial stability. He also founded and co-chaired the Cities for Financial Empowerment Coalition (CFE Coalition), which brings together pioneering municipal governments from across the country to advance innovative financial empowerment initiatives on the municipal, state, and national level. At the CFE Fund, Mintz provides resources to local government leaders and their partners across the world looking to expand financial empowerment programs, policies, and research.

From 2006-2013, Jonathan served as the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA), having been appointed to the role by former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. During this time, Mintz redefined the Department’s regulatory enforcement powers toward a focus on consumer financial stability, re-envisioning consumer rights in fields such as debt collection, process serving, employment, and finance. He also launched the Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE), which has been replicated by local governments across the nation to systematically advance programs in financial counseling and education, asset building, and safe banking. Having joined the DCA in 2002 as First Deputy Commissioner, Mintz worked in the Bloomberg Administration for its full 12 years, and was the longest serving Commissioner in the history of the Department.

Building on these experiences in New York City government, Mintz has pioneered the “Supervitamin Effect,” a growing body of programs, policies, and research that measures the positive impacts of integrating financial empowerment services into mainstream local government antipoverty programs such as workforce development, public housing, domestic violence, prisoner reentry, and more.

Mintz has also worked as an attorney, professor of law, and Second Grade teacher, with graduate degrees from Cornell School of Law and Bank Street College of Education. He lives in New York City with his husband and their two young daughters.