With little fanfare, an assistant opened the door to reveal a wide, spacious corner conference room with huge glass windows overlooking City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge in the hazy distance. City Council Speaker Adrienne E. Adams, in a light-blue basketweave tweed ensemble, quietly waited at the table, her hands clasped as she smiled warmly.
She recently sat down with the AmNews to discuss her upbringing, her historic legacy as an elected official, her legendary legislative battles, and her transition after her 2025 mayoral run.
Adams, 65, is term-limited and has enjoyed a long career in the City Council. She was first elected to District 28 in Queens in 2017, becoming the first woman to hold that seat. Adams made history again in 2022 when her peers elected her as speaker, making her the first Black person to hold the position. Through it all, she’s gained friends and waded through the inevitable criticism that comes with Black women in leadership, she said.
“I have to just exhale and come back to myself without the title in front of my name. I’ve got to get back to Adrienne,” said Adams about what comes next. “And then, when I reemerge, what I continue to say is that I’m looking forward to the next great thing, whatever it may be.”
A lifelong Queens native, she was raised in Hollis with her sister. Her mother was a corrections officer at Rikers Island who retired as a captain, and her father was a UPS truck driver for about 35 years. She and her father attended CUNY’s York College briefly at the same time while he was continuing his education in economics, and admitted that she was utterly embarrassed about that back then. Speaking fondly about her parents, Adams showed off their weathered photographs in her wallet. Her father, who had COVID, died in 2020, and her mother followed the next year. She credited her parents for her strong sense of self and commitment to public service.
“I hear them speaking to me. My angel on my right is Mom and my angel on my left is Dad, so I carry them on my shoulders all the time,” said Adams.
Adams went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in early childhood development from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. The renowned poet and author Maya Angelou was her keynote speaker and performed her “Phenomenal Woman” poem that year. Adams said she’s kept the program and an article written about it.
Before entering public office, Adams spent nearly three decades in the private sector as a corporate trainer and human capital management specialist for several Fortune 500 companies, including MCI Telecommunications, Winstar Communications, and Goldman Sachs. She also served as a child development associate instructor, training childcare professionals to obtain national credentials.
Adams, Adams, Trump, and Cuomo
Adams attended Bayside High School in Queens at the same time as future Mayor Eric Adams. The two are not related. She joked that he ran in a very different crowd from hers, so they weren’t very close. “Needless to say, I went to class, and my circles were very interested in staying tip-top of our grades while maintaining our cool,” she said.
The mayor was far from the only person from her borough to pursue politics and fame. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is about three years older than both of the Adamses, grew up in the more affluent Holliswood neighborhood about a mile away. Also close by, in Jamaica Estates, was a younger President Donald Trump, and his father, Frederick Trump Sr., a real-estate developer and unprincipled businessperson. She never interacted with Trump as a youth, and finds his current attitudes towards the city and country an “insult,” she said.
While Adams was on a pause from her hectic corporate career, one of her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sisters introduced her to Queens Community Board (CB) 12. Adams was excited by the grassroots level of community government and the passion of her neighbors. She dove in head-first. She was initially appointed to the CB by former Councilmember Tom White in 2009; was elected chairperson of the CB for three consecutive terms, from 2012 to 2017; and also co-chaired the Jamaica NOW Leadership Council, where she helped oversee more than $150 million in local investments.
It was there that she met and befriended Cuomo.
“I got to know him over the years as being the governor. I was chairperson of Community Board 12, and I got to know him as one of the elected officials that we would see in Queens from time to time,” said Adams. “He appointed me to sit on the Jamaica NOW commission. And we’re the ones that actually started the redevelopment phases for the downtown Jamaica area.”
Adams announced her campaign for mayor against Eric Adams back in March 2025, after months of her colleagues encouraging her to run. Cuomo had announced his campaign for mayor just a few days before. She said that he did not take her decision well. “And I understood. You know, we ran in the same circles politically, so he was endeared by the Black community, and I am [from] the Black community, so that was the difference,” she said. “He knew if and when I were to get into that race, it would be an extreme threat to his [campaign]. So, yeah, he didn’t like it very much. We were still very cordial and still are, actually.”
Both eventually lost this year’s June primary to now Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, another Queens “alum.” Adams doesn’t regret her short mayoral campaign as the “reluctant politician” who got into the game late but was determined to make an impact.
“It turned into something of an out-of-body experience that I’ll never forget,” said Adams about receiving immense support to run for mayor from her colleagues, friends, and family at an awards event in Albany.
Big wins
Not one to linger too long on losses, Adams is very proud of her tenure on the City Council and as speaker. It was defined by her singular focus on bringing members from all walks of life together, and on pushing legislation that addressed equity, public safety through community investment, and the housing crisis — despite at times hurtful dust-ups with Mayor Adams.
Her accomplishments include the Fair Housing Framework Law, City Fighting Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement (CityFHEPS) housing reforms, and advancements in Black maternal health. However, she is especially proud of her work to support state Trauma Recovery Centers (TRCs) and CUNY Reconnect. The CUNY Reconnect program, launched in 2022, was inspired by witnessing her father return to school. It has since helped approximately 60,000 working-age students who left college without a degree return to complete their education. Adams also secured funding for the state’s first four TRCs. These centers offer holistic, wraparound services; including mental health, legal, and financial support, for survivors of violent crime in underserved communities. She has a goal of eventually opening one of these centers in Jamaica, Queens.
“These are facilities that help victims of violence, victims of domestic abuse, victims of sexual abuse; help formerly incarcerated individuals, people that have perpetrated violence upon other people. These are safe havens, free of charge. These are safe havens for people that want to get their lives back on track,” said Adams. “We typically put victims on the back burner and just let them kind of take care of themselves and their own mental health or whatever scars they have, and just hope that they’ll get better. The trauma recovery centers are the first-ever in New York State, by the way, giving [people] the ability to get their lives back through healing.”
Above all, some of her favorite memories revolve around watching her fellow councilmembers become mothers, and in some cases fathers, over the last four years. Many ended up bringing their children to work and letting parenthood influence their policy work, she said.
Her biggest regret as speaker was the time she spent away from her home and council district. “I don’t see failure. Perhaps regret. And the regret would be the majority of time having to be spent away from my district, because I’m no longer just the representative council member for District 28,” said Adams. “I am that representative for 50 additional council members and their districts for the entire city of New York, so I have not been able to spend the amount of time that I would want and have wanted to spend in my own district.”
Adams’s office is already cleared out. She led her last stated meeting at City Hall on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. She said she doesn’t exactly have numerous job offers lined up, nor does she want them. At the moment, her focus is to kick back with her family and simply reconnect with her grandchildren.