Geraldine Hart, the Suffolk County Police commissioner, will become Hofstra University’s next Director of Public Safety, beginning this summer, Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz announced.

The Hempstead-N.Y. university began the search for the position after Director of Public Safety Karen O’Callaghan announced in December that she would retire June 1 after 11 years at Hofstra and nearly three decades in law enforcement.

Hart is the first woman to serve as Suffolk, New York's police commissioner. She took over the position in 2018 after previously serving 22 years at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, most recently as the senior supervisory agent of the Long Island office.

Hart implemented new initiatives during her tenure with the Suffolk County Police Department, including implementing implicit bias training for officers, collecting and sharing traffic stop data to identify and reduce racial disparities, increased access to language services for non-English speaking residents and recruiting in communities of color that resulted in the most diverse police recruit class in county history.

Congratulations!