Mayor Lurie Fires SF Innovation Office Director Florence Simon
Florence Simon, hired less than a year ago to modernize city contracting, was pushed out just six weeks after her office won new Bloomberg funding.
Six weeks after the Mayor's Office of Innovation secured expanded Bloomberg Philanthropies funding to hire data scientists and product managers, Mayor Daniel Lurie dismissed its director, Florence Simon, in what sources are calling a major pivot for City Hall's contracting and technology reform agenda.
The mayor's office described the departure as a mutual decision. A source with direct knowledge of the situation said Simon had been let go.
Simon, a former McKinsey consultant, had been in the role for less than a year. Her office, formed in 2012 with the explicit goal of making San Francisco's government as technologically nimble as the Silicon Valley companies headquartered in its backyard, had been positioned to grow: renewed Bloomberg Philanthropies funding announced in February created additional roles in data science and product management to expand the scope and impact of its projects. The expansion was enacted roughly a month and a half before her dismissal.
The timing raises immediate questions about who will lead the newly expanded office and whether the momentum behind those fresh hires and reform initiatives holds. No successor or interim director has been named.
The dismissal marks the second key personnel change in Lurie's administration this week, a pattern that signals an active reshaping of City Hall leadership less than a year into his tenure. Neither Lurie nor Simon has offered an on-the-record statement explaining the split.
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