After 18 months on the job, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie's chief of staff, Staci Slaughter, has announced she will be stepping down from the job in June.

It may not qualify as a shakeup in City Hall, but a major power player in Mayor Daniel Lurie's administration is taking her leave midway through his second year in office, citing a desire to return to private life. Staci Slaughter, 59, will be leaving the chief of staff post in "late June," per the Chronicle, and her replacement has not been selected yet.

"By every measure, the City is moving in the right direction and, for the first time in a very long time, San Franciscans feel the city is on the right track," says Slaughter in a statement. "With that foundation in place, I feel this summer is the right time to return to retirement and hand the reins over to our talented Mayor’s Office team, who will keep moving San Francisco forward."

Mayor Daniel Lurie issued a statement of appreciation for Slaughter, saying, "When I took office last year, we reimagined the structure of the Mayor’s Office, brought in senior leaders with experience outside government, and built our team around common sense and a commitment to delivering results. Staci Slaughter took our priorities and mapped out the plan. She helped assemble and mentor a team of leaders to implement that plan. And she reset the tone in City Hall, fostering a culture of collaboration that the second floor hadn’t seen in years, to help turn that plan into reality."

Slaughter came out of retirement to work in the newly formed Lurie administration in December 2024, having previously retired in 2022 from the San Francisco Giants organization where she spent 26 years in roles including executive vice president and senior advisor to the CEO.

As the Chronicle notes, Slaughter previously worked in City Hall in the 1990s, serving as press secretary to Mayor Frank Jordan.

Shortly after being elected, Lurie laid out, under Slaughter's advisement, a new model for managing the web of city departments by creating four new deputy roles who answered to Slaughter and who could each manage a set of related city departments and agencies. These include a Chief of Public Safety, a Chief of Housing and Economic Development; aChief of Infrastructure, Climate and Mobility; and a Chief of Public Health and Wellbeing.

Slaughter is also credited with encouraging Lurie's highly active, boostery social media presence, touting each accomplishment and expressing an endlessly positive attitude about the city itself.

While Lurie is enjoying some notably high approval numbers right now, the challenge ahead will be to keep those numbers up and keep the momentum going in terms of the public's perception of street safety, cleanliness, housing development, and homelessness above all.

Lurie praised Slaughter for "invest[ing] the time to give the current and future leaders of our city the tools to succeed and grow."

"I am no exception," Lurie adds. "Staci has been an incredible partner and an even better friend. Like so many others, I will continue to benefit from her support in the months and years to come. But thanks to Staci, our team is ready now to seize the opportunities and tackle the challenges our city faces."

Related: Lurie Taps Former Giants Executive as Chief of Staff, Announces Other New Hires

Photo by Noah Fetz