Chris Ruggeri has spent nearly two decades helping steward CitizensNYC through change, growth, and some of the most challenging moments New York City has faced in a generation.
She joined the board in 2008, around the time of the financial crisis, when she was thinking seriously about what it meant to contribute to the city that had given her so much.
“I wanted to step back a little bit and recognize that I’m part of this broader community of New York City,” she said. “I have been fortunate in having realized some success in my career and wanted to engage with the broader community and see if I could help make a bit of a difference in the city.”
That sense of responsibility has guided her service ever since.
Born in Jersey City and raised on the Jersey Shore, Chris has always had New York in her life. Her mother was from Brooklyn, her father ran a corner pharmacy just across the Hudson, and the city was part of her world from the beginning. She never remembers discovering New York for the first time. It was simply always there: familiar, alive, full of people and possibility.
Across a career that has spanned senior leadership in finance, advisory services, and sustainability, Chris has carried a few core principles with her: accountability, teamwork, trust, and humility. You set goals. You deliver results. You build strong teams. You understand what you are good at, and you trust others to bring their own strengths to the table.
Those same values shaped her leadership at CitizensNYC.
As Board Chair, Chris helped guide the organization with a steady hand and a clear belief in the power of people. She is proudest not of any single project, but of the “glue” that connects the board, the staff, and the community leaders CitizensNYC supports.
“I think it’s the people,” she said. “It’s always been the people. That’s the most enduring, powerful thing that I’ve engaged with in Citizens.”
For Chris, that is what makes CitizensNYC so unique. The organization begins with a simple but radical belief: every New Yorker has something to contribute. People already have the ideas, passion, and drive to improve their neighborhoods. What they need is support, trust, and access to the resources that help turn those ideas into action.
“Citizens does what other organizations really don’t do,” Chris said. “It recognizes that every single human being in this city — rich, poor, Black, white, you name it — can make a difference, can contribute.”
That belief is what first drew Chris to the organization, and what has kept her deeply involved for so long. CitizensNYC does not arrive in neighborhoods with a top-down answer. It listens. It asks people what they need, what they want to build, and what they already know is possible. Then it helps them act.
Chris sees that approach as deeply New York. In a city this big, it can be easy to wonder who is supposed to fix what is broken or act on what is possible. CitizensNYC’s answer is simple: all of us.
“New York City is our home,” she said. “When we see something broken, we fix it. When we see an opportunity, we act on it.”
Chris has seen that model come to life in countless ways, from young people in the Rockaways creating a place to study after school, to community gardens in the South Bronx, where she has helped plant, maintain beds, and, as she put it, chase chickens. Those are the kinds of moments that stay with her. They reveal what community-led change really means: practical, human, rooted in trust, and sometimes involving chickens.
Over the years, Chris helped lead CitizensNYC through economic uncertainty, the COVID-19 pandemic, leadership changes, shifts in city government, and changing needs across the communities the organization serves. She is quick to say it was never effortless. But she is proud that CitizensNYC has always come through those moments stronger.
That resilience came from culture. During her time as Board Chair, Chris worked to keep the organization grounded, practical, and focused. This approach has served CitizensNYC well because the work itself has always required adaptation. The needs have changed. The model has evolved. But the core belief has remained the same: New Yorkers know what their communities need, and they deserve support to build it.
That is why being honored as a New Yorker for New York means so much to her.
“It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to serve as part of the Citizens board,” Chris said. “To me, I look at my time on the board as being a servant to this city.”
We are proud to honor Chris Ruggeri as one of this year’s New Yorkers for New York: a leader whose work reminds us that service is not about standing above the community, but standing with it.
