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Sadiq Khan promotes three young women to top team after four directors quit City Hall Ross Lydall
Sadiq Khan has rebuilt his top team at City Hall by promoting three dynamic young women after losing four of his most senior aides.
Mr Khan’s four mayoral directors – Paddy Hennessy, Leah Kreitzman, Nick Bowes and Jack Stenner - used the end of his first mayoral term to depart their £120,000-a-year jobs.
Today he appointed Ali Picton as mayoral director for operations, Sarah Brown as mayoral director for communications and Felicity Appleby as mayoral director for political and public affairs.
Each is in their thirties and renowned for their intelligence, political insight and loyalty to Mr Khan, who often emphasises the importance of having a close-knit group of advisers and building a “’Team London’ spirit”.
In April 2016 Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan sat beside each other in a debate at the Union Chapel in Islington. They were both on stools – Labour s Khan’s feet swung several inches above the ground – and the difference between them was striking. Khan was scrappy and cocksure.
Goldsmith answered questions with all the pugnacious dynamism of an aristocrat showing tourists around his estate. “I was very taken by a relaxed, laid-back public schoolboy and a much smaller, energised Sadiq,” said an audience member, who at the time was working in City Hall alongside Boris Johnson. “Zac lounged like a head of house at Eton. Sadiq was a coiled spring of energy, of pent-up, furious desire.”