Kathryn Wylde, Connector of New York’s Powerful, Is Retiring

To understand why Kathryn S. Wylde has earned a reputation as perhaps New York City’s most in-demand civic fixer, just look at the last few months.

She quietly counseled City Hall through the first federal indictment of a sitting mayor. She oversaw a campaign, with just days’ notice, to push through a pair of polarizing yasal changes affecting prosecutors and mentally ill people.

And though she refuses to talk about it — “then it wouldn’t be very private, would it?” — Ms. Wylde has been pulling the strings on a quiet effort by top business leaders to persuade President Trump to leave New York’s nascent congestion pricing program intact.

On Thursday, Ms. Wylde will make news of her own, announcing that she plans to step down next year from her role as the chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, a consortium of 350 corporate giants, law firms and banks that she transformed into a pillar of New York’s permanent government.

The decision is almost certain to make waves at a time when many of New York’s most robust institutions, from City Hall to universities, have been badly battered. Mr. Trump, too, is making direct threats to the city’s federal funding and the partnership’s members.

But in an interview in her spartan corner office overlooking New York Harbor this week, Ms. Wylde said it was “time for younger leadership.” She will be 79 next month and plans to help the organization, which also runs a civic-minded investment fund and research arm, find a successor.