About this episode

Jamie Rubin interviews Julie Sandorf about the issues surrounding New York City's lifeguard program and potential solutions.

In the summer of 2022, families in New York City were waiting six hours in the heat to swim for one hour. Julie Sandorf, who ran the Charles Revson Foundation for nearly two decades, decided to find out why — and what she found was a lifeguard program that had been controlled by a single union official for nearly fifty years, accountable to no one, operating under certification requirements that exist nowhere else in the country, with exactly one test site in all of New York City. Jamie talks with Julie about how a Chicago after-school program from 2000 ended up being the model for fixing the problem, and what it actually means to be a smart, catalytic private funder in a city government this complicated. For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

People in this episode

Host: Jamie Rubin

Guest: Julie Sandorf

Topics covered

• urban life
• government accountability
• public services
• community programs
• funding solutions

Keywords

• lifeguard program
• New York City
• Julie Sandorf
• urban solutions
• community funding

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Charles Revson Foundation

Places: New York City, Chicago

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