Emma Barash met Mitchell Schwartz when she brought a sensitive issue to his attention while they worked at New York City Hall.
Emma March Barash took a mind-tingling polar plunge with three friends at Jacob Riis Park Beach in Queens on New Year’s Day 2022. Later, when they stopped for dim sum in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, she took another daring plunge.
She texted Mitchell Harlan Schwartz.
“So, Mitch, are you going to ask me to get a drink or what?”
Mr. Schwartz was then Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first deputy press secretary coordinating public responses to policy matters at New York City Hall; Ms. Barash worked in the second floor bullpen, one flight up, as a policy adviser to Melanie Hartzog, the deputy mayor for health and human services.
The two had met in October 2021 after Ms. Barash brought a sensitive issue to his attention: expanding access to child care vouchers.
“I told her we’d be OK,” said Mr. Schwartz, who graduated cum laude from Kenyon College with a bachelor’s degree in political science.
“She was very beautiful, very brilliant, very composed and easy to talk to,” Mr. Schwartz said, when she dropped by his desk.
Ms. Barash, who graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in humanities, received a master of public affairs from the University of California, Berkeley.
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