Saratu Ghartey

Saratu Ghartey serves as SEO’s Chief Operating Officer, where she leads SEO’s Administration, Finance, HR, IT, and Real Estate, teams. In her role, she ensures that SEO’s people, technology, administrative, and financial resources empower the programs to maximize SEO’s impact.

Saratu comes to us from New York City government, where she was a senior leader for over a decade. From 2020 to 2022, she served as First Deputy Commissioner for the NYC Department of Social Services (DSS), where she had broad responsibility for the day-to-day management of city social service programs, including all administrative and support functions. She began her city government tenure leading DSS’s integrity arm, serving as the agency’s Chief Program Accountability Officer from 2014 to 2020. In this role, she had agency-wide responsibility for ensuring compliance with all statutory, regulatory, and contractual standards. She managed a division of over 1,300 staff responsible for investigations, collections, regulatory compliance, data security, audit, and quality assurance. Additionally, Saratu directly managed human resources, IT, and facilities functions for her division.