Mayor's Office

Mary Bottari

Chief of Staff
mbottari@cityofmadison.com

Mary Bottari is Mayor Rhodes-Conway's Chief of Staff. Bottari will serve as the Mayor’s LGBTQ liaison. Bottari worked in the Wisconsin Senate for Sen. Lynn Adelman, then in the U.S. Senate as Press Secretary for Sen. Russ Feingold. She later worked for the national consumer group Public Citizen on a host of consumer, worker and fair trade issues, and consequently served on Madison’s Committee on Sweatfree Purchases. She joined the Center for Media and Democracy in 2009, where she helped transform the organization into an award-winning national watchdog group focusing on democracy, environment and economic justice issues. She served on the advisory board of Good Jobs First, a national policy resource center in economic development and smart growth.

Leslie Orrantia

Deputy Mayor
lorrantia@cityofmadison.com

Leslie Orrantia joins the Mayor’s team and will oversee aspects of economic development, public health, and transportation, while building regional relationships for the long-term growth and sustainability of our larger region. She joins the office with more than a decade of experience in community relations and business administration within Dane County. Since 2016, Orrantia has served as Director of Community Relations on behalf of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor. She was the primary point-of-contact with county, city, and community entities and facilitated meaningful collaborations between campus and community, spanning research, practice, and policy. Previously, she was Assistant Director for the Wisconsin Collaborative Education Research Network within UW’s School of Education. Prior to her work at the university, she served as a caseworker in Madison for nearly five years. Orrantia has a bachelor’s degree in sociology and psychology from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts

Dr. Linda Vakunta

Deputy Mayor
lvakunta@cityofmadison.com

Dr. Linda Vakunta joins the Mayor’s Office to assist with housing and human services with more than a decade of experience in grassroots community engagement and program development, monitoring and evaluation work. She served as Program Director at the Chicago-based Heartland Alliance International (HAI), where she led, developed, and designed training programs for government, community, and non-governmental organizations to combat trafficking in persons. In recent years, she has worked as a researcher with Sustaining Natural Circle’s CDC funded grant on understanding impacts of opioid use among African American women in Madison. Dr. Vakunta is a founder and executive director of a Wisconsin-based non-profit called Project 1808. She was instrumental in the growth, success, and global-local recognition of the group as an important player in transforming lives, enabling youth and adults, and building capacity in Sierra Leone through School-Community-University Partnership Models. She holds a PhD in Environmental Studies, a Master’s Degree in Rehabilitation Psychology and a Bachelor’s Degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Cameron McLay

Deputy Mayor
cmclay@cityofmadison.com

Cameron McLay will help the Mayor with the City-wide initiative on Performance Excellence. McLay has enjoyed a long career creating high-performing outcome base organizations, with a goal of providing equitable and high-quality service to communities. McLay served for many years with the City of Madison Police Department, where he retired at the rank of captain in 2014. He later served as the Chief of Police for the City of Pittsburg where he institutionalized data-driven community oriented policing; improved relationships between officers and the communities they served, and instituted systems of accountability to restore integrity to the leadership systems. He also recently served as a Senior Advisor for PricewaterhouseCoopers Safe Neighborhood Analytics Initiative and as a consultant to the City of Seattle. McLay holds a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership, with an academic focus on human resource performance.

Natasha Holmes

Executive Assistant
nholmes@cityofmadison.com

Natasha Holmes will serve as the Mayor’s Executive Assistant. She has a wealth of professional experience in both executive management, marketing and social media. As a Senior Administrative Operations Assistant and as a Senior Executive Assistant at UW Health, Natasha supported the Maintenance and Engineering department of over 200 employees, and worked as the executive assistant for the department’s director, as well as three other senior managers. Prior to her work at UW Health, Natasha was the Digital Marketing and Social Media Manager for Max Score Credit in Silver Springs, MD and brings social media experience to the Mayor’s Office, including a stint as a Realtor in Washington, DC where she focused heavily on property marketing through social media to sell historic and luxury homes. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and Supply Chain Management from Howard University in Maryland. She is a proud graduate of Madison West High School.

George Reistad

Food Policy Director
greistad@cityofmadison.com

S. Tariq Saqqaf

Neighborhood Resource Coordinator
tsaqqaf@cityofmadison.com

Laila D'Costa

Administrative Coordinator
ldcosta@cityofmadison.com

Responsibilities

• Manage appointments to City boards, committees, and commissions
• Sister City Collaboration Committee