Mayor Wu Announces New Leadership for Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics

Mayor Michelle Wu today announced Shin-pei Tsay as the new Director and Marcy Ostberg as Deputy Director of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics (MONUM). Tsay and Ostberg bring experience in urban planning and city government, including in areas of sustainability, transportation, housing, and education. Tsay and Ostberg both started earlier this month and are filling previous vacancies in MONUM.  

MONUM works across departments and communities to explore, experiment, and evaluate new approaches to government and civic life. The office was formed in 2010 as the Mayor's civic research and design team (one of the first in the nation). Since then, MONUM has been instrumental in seeding experiments that have become critical public services, such as Boston’s 311 app; truck side guards, which have spread to over a dozen cities in the US and is the model for state law and national research efforts; Boston Saves, which is now available to all BPS students to help them save for college; and zoning changes to allow homeowners to add Additional Dwelling Units (ADUs). Tsay and Ostberg are both eager to reimagine civic innovation at a time when the City and people of Boston have so much innovation underway.

“I’m excited to welcome Shin-pei and Marcy to MONUM, an office at the center of innovation and research that collaborates with a wide variety of city departments and projects,” said Mayor Michelle Wu. “Shin-pei brings an extensive expertise in urban mechanics, in crucial issue areas for Boston such as transportation and sustainability. Marcy has a firsthand knowledge of City Hall and how to solve problems for our residents, having worked previously in MONUM, the Mayor’s Office of Housing, and as a Boston Public Schools teacher.”

Shin-pei Tsay

Tsay’s work experience converges on policy, design, and governance to shape inclusive and sustainable cities. She has spearheaded innovative approaches to systemic challenges across numerous urban issues, often with a focus on the public realm and transportation. Her intersectional work is infused with entrepreneurialism, building teams to co-create strategic research agendas, engagement, and tactics aimed at broad public impact and with multiple stakeholders. 

Prior to joining the City of Boston, she was the global policy director for cities and sustainability at Uber, where she was named a Sustainability Star by AdWeek for her work on the company’s first global sustainability commitment. She founded Make Public, a social impact analysis firm, and was executive director of Gehl Institute, a non-profit that advocated for public life and public spaces, where her team created a framework that integrated factors in the public realm with social determinants of health and equity that is now used widely by philanthropies. Tsay also served as deputy executive director of TransitCenter, a national foundation focused on improving urban transportation where she played a pivotal role growing the transit civic ecosystem to lead policy reform. She created the Cities and Transportation program under the Energy and Climate Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace where she worked with Senator Bill Bradley, Secretary Tom Ridge, and Honorable Dave Walker on developing an innovative revenue mechanism to fund the federal transportation program. 

Tsay served on the NYC Public Design Commission as well as numerous non-profit boards including Transportation Alternatives, ioby, and SPUR, and taught urban design at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Art, and Preservation and Parsons School of Design at the New School. She holds a BA in government from Cornell University and a MSc in geography from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She lives with her family in Jamaica Plain.

“I’m honored to be joining the talented staff in Mayor Wu’s administration to execute on her vision,” said Shin-pei Tsay, Director of MONUM. “I look forward to collaborating on reimagining civic innovation for the City with stakeholders across all sectors while delivering concrete outcomes for the people of Boston.”

Marcy Ostberg

Ostberg brings to her work an eclectic background in civic innovation, urban policy, and education. She utilizes a human-centered design approach to help teams connect and collaborate with people. She believes transformational change comes when these groups work side-by-side to uncover problems and design solutions.

Ostberg has significant experience putting this methodology into practice at the City of Boston beginning as a fellow in the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics and later leading the Housing Innovation Lab. She became skilled at gathering community input, generating buy-in, and building cross-sector teams to move forward with complex projects aimed at making Boston housing more affordable, such as pioneering zoning changes to encourage ADUs and to encourage creative thinking about combining housing with public assets. Then as the Director of Operations for the Mayor’s Office of Housing, she advised leadership and improved operations, leading critical efforts such as coordinating the department’s COVID-19 response to ensure uninterrupted service delivery and expanded access to rental relief and other resources.  

Prior to her civic leadership roles, Ostberg served as a teacher at the Boston Day & Evening Academy, a Boston Public School, where she crafted and delivered experiential, personalized learning modules. Marcy holds a MA in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning from Tufts University, and an MEd from Franklin Pierce University. 

"The opportunity to return to MONUM as Deputy Director is incredibly exciting. Having been part of this dynamic team before, I understand the power of its innovative approach to civic challenges,” said Marcy Ostberg, Deputy Director of MONUM. “I'm energized by the prospect of not only continuing that legacy but also scaling its successful model to empower other city departments, ensuring that its transformative impact reaches even more facets of city life.”

Ostberg lives in Jamaica Plain with her husband and two kids. You're likely to spot them at the community garden, playing softball at Franklin Park, or biking up and down the Southwest Corridor.

"The MONUM alumni, including its former Chair Kris Carter and former Chief of Staff Jaclyn Youngblood, and I are very excited for this new chapter at the Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics," said Michael Lawrence Evans, Director of Emerging Technology for the City of Boston and former Interim MONUM Director. "Bostonians will benefit greatly from Shin-pei and Marcy's nationally-recognized expertise, deep understanding of local issues, and collaborative spirit that will support the City of Boston's position at the cutting-edge of government service delivery."