Gurus of New York: CIPA grads oversee billions spent on Big Apple infrastructure.

Negrea, Sherrie

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They met weekly at the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs Colloquium, hearing insights from government officials, public policy researchers, and nonprofit leaders. Now they see one another every day, working for the New York City Office of Management and Budget.

Marcus Cerroni '10, MPA '13, Dan Nolan, MPA '13, and Cathy Wu, MPA '13, are among more than one dozen CIPA graduates tending to the finances of one of the world's largest cities at NYC's OMB. While they are assigned to different teams, the three alumni share a close bond.

"It just makes the environment and the work that much more enjoyable," says Cerroni, who has a bachelor's degree in policy analysis and management. "Going to work and having people you can rely on not only to get into the agency but to show you the ropes is tremendously valuable."

While Cerroni and Wu work on a task force managing Federal Emergency Management Agency Public Assistance grants to repair damage inflicted by Hurricane Sandy, Nolan is assigned to a team monitoring the finances of New York's cultural institutions. All three work as senior analysts.

Nolan's position focuses on approving funding requests from cultural nonprofits, ensuring their projects are included in the city budget, and confirming how the money will be used.

What Nolan likes about his job is the influence the OMB has on places such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Botanical Garden, and American Museum of Natural History. "New York City operates under the assumption that a vibrant cultural scene benefits all New Yorkers and that funding these institutions is a public good," he says.

At the other end of the seventh floor, Wu and Cerroni are helping the city access $10 billion in FEMA grants. Wu works with the city's health-related agencies and hospitals, and Cerroni manages finances for the Department of Transportation and a group of smaller administrative agencies.

Through the efforts of Wu's team, OMB recently received $1.7 billion for four public hospitals across the city: Bellevue Hospital Center, City Hospital on Roosevelt Island, Coney Island Hospital, and Coler-Goldwater Specialty Hospital and Nursing Facility.

"The repair work is just part of the [award]," Wu says. "The majority of the funding goes to mitigation work, which tries to avoid future storm damage by elevating critical infrastructure to higher levels and building flood walls."

In the transportation arena, Cerroni is applying for grants that will be used to ensure city roadways can withstand another storm of Sandy's magnitude. For each grant, Cerroni oversees the application process and the expenditure phase during construction.

With all of these projects, Cerroni is applying the skills he learned at CIPA, which makes working at the OMB fitting. "Being regulatory agents for the city, we have to know accounting and budgeting and project management skills," he says. "Being able to use the education you received is always rewarding."