Meet Shelisa Reid, Manager of Wyckoff Gardens

As part of a new series, we’re periodically featuring the female property managers who help NYCHA carry out its mission to better serve residents and strengthen our partnership with them. NYCHA supports and encourages women in leadership positions in all departments, including property management. Currently, there are 260 women working as property managers at the Authority. In this installment, meet one of them – Shelisa Reid.

Since 2016, Shelisa Reid has been the property manager at Wyckoff Gardens in Brooklyn, but her relationship with NYCHA runs much longer: She’s been a Breukelen Houses resident for more than 30 years, and it’s her status as a resident that she believes benefits her daily work.

“I love being a resident and a property manager,” Ms. Reid said. “Most of my residents know that I still live in housing. I try to treat my residents the way I would want to be treated. I always said that once I got into a leadership position, I wanted to try to change the mantra that some residents feel like management doesn’t understand their concerns because we don’t go home to NYCHA. We’re not perfect, but we try to give them the best care and service that we can. Being a resident myself also helps some of the residents feel more comfortable with me. ” 

She prides herself on the relationships she’s built with members of Wyckoff’s resident association, residents, and her staff. “As a manager of the development, you’re responsible for everything good, everything bad, and you have to be reachable by your staff, your residents, other departments. I like to be hands-on and I feel there’s no job as a manager that you shouldn’t be able to do; we set the example for other leaders.” 

There is no day for her that is necessarily the same. She walks the grounds of Wyckoff and the community center; she oversees resident transfer requests and reviews work order tickets; she handles administrative and staff-related duties such as working on budgets, reviewing time and attendance, and approving annual leave; she conducts weekly meetings with the resident association president and monthly meetings with the development’s safety associate; and she handles the numerous emergencies that often arise. In addition to Wyckoff, she also manages Atlantic Terminal.

“During COVID-19, I didn’t telework,” Ms. Reid said. “I’ve been here at the development every day because my caretakers and maintenance staff couldn’t telework. It builds morale knowing that their leadership is doing what they’re doing.” 

Ms. Reid has been a NYCHA employee for 25 years. She got her start with the Authority as a housing youth trainee, a training program that put young residents to work at the developments half of the week while teaching them skills in the classroom the other half of the week. 

She worked her way up the ladder, working in the Leased Housing Department for 10 years before transferring to Van Dyke Houses in 2004 to be superintendent secretary. In 2014, she became a housing assistant at Linden Houses, then an assistant manager at Sheepshead Bay Houses, and in 2016, when the Authority was looking for a new property manager with great people skills for Wyckoff, Ms. Reid was tasked with the job.

Ms. Reid said she has mentors who had faith in her and helped her move up in her career, and she wants to do the same for others. When asked of a moment she was most proud of as property manager, she called out her nomination of her colleague, Supervisor of Caretakers Ruben Lopez, for the Mayor’s Office 2020 Excellence in Customer Service Award – and he won. “Anybody that knows me, knows that my favorite quote is ‘Each one, reach one; each one, teach one.’ We’re supposed to be teaching each other and preparing the next generation to become supervisors.”