Warwick Chief of Staff Aaron Mackisey is set to leave Mayor Frank Picozzi’s administration within the coming months to take a job in Washington, D.C.

While an official date hasn’t been set yet, Mackisey said his final day as Chief of Staff will come in late June or early July.

Though Mackisey wouldn’t get into the details of his new job, he said that through it he would have an opportunity to make an impact on people.

“I’m somebody who has always been passionate about public service and very passionate about the City of Warwick,” Mackisey said. “But by the same token, I think there are limited opportunities in your life, both personally and professionally. And I have a chance to go and do something that has an even larger impact on a larger scale in Washington. I think that this time in my life, being somebody who’s still only 26, I can take that chance.”

A former staffer for Senator Jack Reed, Mackisey was drawn to politics by what he characterized as a strong sense of service, which he credits to his grandfathers, both Warwick firefighters, one of whom who died in the line of duty.

Mackisey first ran for an office of his own in 2020, when he mounted an unsuccessful campaign to represent Ward 9 on the City Council. Unbeknownst to him, though, Picozzi had wanted him on his team since he first met with him, and hired him as an administrative assistant.

From there, he would rise through Picozzi’s team, eventually becoming the youngest Chief of Staff in the city’s history in March of 2023.

“I consider [Picozzi] a member of my family,” Mackisey said. “He’s somebody who took me from failed political candidate and graduate student, took a chance on hiring me in the first place to join this administration and have this opportunity. It’s been very personally fulfilling.”

Mackisey attended The Catholic University of America in Washington for his undergraduate degree, and said that while he majored in musical theatre, he found himself checking the news about the 2016 primaries while other classmates rehearsed their songs. That led him to realize that he might be happier in a political career, and though he enjoyed theater, politics was what made him excited to work.

Mackisey credits his refocusing on public service to an unlikely name- John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio. During Kasich’s 2016 campaign for President, Mackisey wrote him a letter about how his candidacy personally impacted him.

While he didn’t expect to hear anything back, Kasich gave Mackisey a call after dropping out, in which he told him to “try and make a difference in the life of your neighbor.”

That talk with Kasich, Mackisey said, refocused his attention on public service.

“It just profoundly changed my life and how I view what I do professionally,” Mackisey said. “And ever since then, I’ve sort of been following that path of how I can best be of service.”

He considers himself a collector of political and Rhode Island memorabilia, all of which he plans on showing off to those he meets in Washington that don’t know much about the area.

What Mackisey really plans to bring with him from Warwick, though, is accessibility- something that he believes the Picozzi administration has excelled at.

“National elections are about numbers, and local elections are about neighbors,” Mackisey said. “What I always tell people who aren’t from Rhode Island and aren’t from Warwick is that politics in general is personal and parochial. There’s something really beautiful about that mindset of local service, that your mayor is not just some bureaucrat sitting in his office, that he is your neighbor too.”

Some of Mackisey’s proudest accomplishments as Chief of Staff include his work in helping some of the city departments collaborate and getting the City Hall Plaza project, which he noted he was there for from its conception, approved by the City Council and ready to build.

Mackisey plans to head back to Warwick when he can, though, saying that seeing Picozzi reelected and the opening of the ice rink would be events that he wouldn’t want to miss.

“I hopefully won’t be looking back from afar- I definitely will be back at some point,” Mackisey said. “By no means is it a goodbye.”

Currently, Picozzi has “several candidates” to replace Mackisey as Chief of Staff. Asked about what he’d like to see from his successor, Mackisey said that he would want them to have an equal focus on public service and enacting Picozzi’s policy agenda.

As he gets ready to head to the nation’s capital, Mackisey wants Warwick residents to know that he’ll never forget where he came from.

No matter what happens in Washington, though, his time in the Mayor’s office has been gratifying for him.

“It was a tough personal decision that I had to make, because I really love this job and I love being able to serve the mayor and the residents in this way,” Mackisey said. “But it’s the right move for me at the right time in my life. And for that, I’m very much at peace.”