Shorris was born in New York City to noted author and humanitarian Earl Shorris and author Sylvia Shorris. A graduate of Collegiate School, Shorris received his AB in Government in 1977 from Harvard College and a Master's in Public Affairs from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1979.
From 1991 to 1995, Shorris served as First Deputy Executive Director of the Port Authority. Shorris then served as the 11th Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from 2007 to 2008. He was nominated to the position by Governor Eliot Spitzer and resigned when David Paterson succeeded Spitzer. During his tenure, the agency would acquire Stewart Airport and continue to reconstruct the World Trade Center. Subsequently, Shorris ran the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy at New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and consulted with various government agencies on infrastructure policy.
Education
From 2000 to 2003, Shorris served as Deputy Chancellor for Operations and Policy in the Board of Education of the City of New York under chancellors Harold O. Levy and Joel I. Klein. In 2006 to 2007, Shorris also led the development of Governor Eliot Spitzer’s education reform initiative while serving as senior policy advisor to the transition. Shorris taught classes on education economics and policy during his tenure on the faculty of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and acted as co-editor on the Brookings Institution’s publication in The Future of Children series, Excellence in the Classroom. Until his appointment as First Deputy Mayor, Shorris served as Vice Dean of the NYU School of Medicine. Prior to that, he was a member of the faculty of the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and Director of the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy. He taught courses in transportation policy and crisis management and was selected “Professor of the Year” for the Wagner School 2009 to 2010 academic year. From 2003 to 2007, he taught at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he also directed the Policy Research Institute for the Region. He held the Frederick H. Schultz Class of 1951 Professor of International Economic Policy chair at Princeton during 2003 to 2004.
Finance and management
From 1984 to 1988, Shorris served as New York City's deputy budget director at the New York City Mayor's Office of Management and Budget, acting as an architect on Koch's Ten Year Housing Plan. Shorris would go on to serve as City's Finance Commissioner from 1987 to 1989 under the Edward I. Koch administration.
Other work and publications
Shorris is a member of the Executive Committee of the Regional Plan Association, where he co-chairs the Fourth Regional Plan, and the Advisory Board of the Independent Budget Office of the City of New York. He is also a member of the board of the Hospital Association of New York State and the Management Committee of the Bio-Medical Research Alliance of New York. Shorris's work on education, infrastructure, and financial management has been published in The New York Times, The Newark Star-Ledger, The Nation, and The Century Foundation.
Personal life
He lives with wife author Maria Laurino and their son Michael in New York City.
