Meet Batei Tsibur’s Michael Deutsch, VP of Infrastructure & Operations
Michael Deutsch, NYCHA’s Vice President of Infrastructure and Operations, is a member of Batei Tsibur, the Authority’s Jewish employees organization. Mr. Deutsch joined NYCHA in December 2022, taking on one of the more complex IT environments in New York City government. “It’s our job to ensure that all of NYCHA’s IT systems are running and functioning,” he said. “That means managing cloud services and data centers, the servers within those data centers, the connectivity between those servers and those data centers, and then, ultimately, all the applications that reside upon that equipment that serves the rest of NYCHA.”
Mr. Deutsch’s path to NYCHA wasn’t linear, but service has always been at the center. After finishing his studies and taking a gap year in Israel, he began his working life in 1999 as a desktop intern for NYC’s Health Department. Over 14 years, he rose through the ranks to become their Executive Director of IT Operations. After a year of consulting in the private sector, Mr. Deutsch returned to public service as Chief Technology Officer at the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development, where he led award-winning initiatives such as the DiscoverDYCD platform and the agency’s customer relationship management and evaluation systems. Eventually, he became both Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer, leading a relatively small but agile team of 50 staffers.
At NYCHA, Mr. Deutsch has focused on team building, system stabilization, and infrastructure modernization. “I don’t need to teach my team what to do,” he said. “They’re very smart and very professional. I try to help out more with the soft skills that can help supplement their technical skills.”
His leadership philosophy: “Build reliable…and be reliable.” That’s guided major cleanups, including the decommissioning of outdated hardware to reduce power and cooling demands and bringing systems to resilience and a state of good repair.
Outside of work, Mr. Deutsch is devoted to family and faith. He and his wife, Chagit, a speech therapist, have been married for 22 years. They live in Marine Park, Brooklyn, with their four children and are active members of the Marine Park Jewish Center, where Mr. Deutsch also serves on the board.
The Deutsch family history is like those of many Central European Jewish families who emigrated to America in the middle of the 20th century: His grandparents met in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany after WWII. His mother’s family had lived for generations in the Hungary-Romania region; his father’s family came from Munkacs (now in Ukraine). With no way back after the war, both families immigrated to Brooklyn, where his parents met. His father became a Ph.D. biochemist and Health Department director; his mother became a Hebrew school teacher.
Whether supporting complex IT systems or participating in Batei Tsibur events, Michael Deutsch manages it all like the mensch that he is.
