When Jessica Tisch was appointed as New York City's police commissioner last week, it was the first time many people had heard her name. But now that you know it, you may start seeing it everywhere. The industrious and philanthropic Tisch family is the 43rd richest in the United States according to Forbes, with members owning the Loews Corporation and the New York Giants.

The Tisch name graces university and hospital buildings across the city and country. Jessica Tisch's grandmother Wilma “Billie” Tisch was a longtime member of the WNYC Board of Trustees and was instrumental in the station transitioning out of city ownership and becoming an independent nonprofit. She is still an honorary board member to this day. (Gothamist and WNYC are part of New York Public Radio).

Jessica Tisch, however, has spent her career as a government insider. She got her start in the police department after graduating from Harvard in 2008 with a dual law and business degree. She later became commissioner of the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications and most recently headed the city sanitation department.

Black Power? Graphs on police killings are from Mapping Police Violence, graph on arrests above is from The Persistence of Racist NYPD Arrests [pdf]. The graph on NYPD stops and searches is from the NYCLU. Data on NYC’s overwhelming non-white jail population is here. In EVERY City Controlled by Elite White Liberals w/a Large Black Population, Cops Stop and Degrade Blacks in Grossly Disproportionate Numbers

As Jessica Tisch begins the tough work of leading the country’s largest police force, here are some facts about her family's history in NYC.

Ms. Tisch has never walked a beat or worn a police uniform. Ms. Tisch first decided to apply for a job at the Police Department in 2008, when she graduated from Harvard Law School, according to a 2019 interview with The Harvard Law Bulletin.

The financial crisis had hit the country and she was worried about finding a job. A friend suggested she go for a position in counterterrorism.

“I can’t even imagine what someone like me would do at the Police Department,” Ms. Tisch recalled thinking, according to the interview.

Raymond W. Kelly, the commissioner at the time, hired her as an analyst and Mr. Bratton later promoted her to deputy commissioner. [MORE]

Ms. Tisch’s family is deeply enmeshed in the city — two relatives sit on the board of trustees of the New York City Police Foundation and family members donated to Mr. Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign.

Her family’s wealth nearly doubled between 2015 and 2024

Forbes ranked the Tisch family as the 43rd richest in the United States. It reported that the family's wealth grew from $6 billion in 2015 to more than $10 billion this year.

Larry and Bob Tisch purchased Loews Theatres in 1959 and turned it into a conglomerate with holdings in insurance, hotels, energy and packaging, according to news reports. Bob Tisch co-owned the New York Giants. His son Steve now co-owns the team.

The family’s business model is to buy failing companies and turn them around, netting the gain in the company’s stock price. Jessica’s grandfather Larry Tisch famously did this with CBS, first saving the broadcasting network from a hostile takeover, though he was later accused of selling off the company’s valuable music and publishing assets, according to his New York Times obituary. [MORE]