Northeast Area Vice President Edward F. Phelan Jr. will retire Feb. 3 after 39 years with USPS.
Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan, who announced Phelan’s retirement in a memo this week, praised his “exceptional contributions” to the organization.
“He has been a highly effective postal executive, and an excellent colleague and mentor to those who have had the opportunity to work with him. I owe him a personal debt of gratitude for his service, commitment to our organization, our employees, and customers,” Brennan wrote.
Phelan has led Northeast Area since 2016, overseeing all postal operations and approximately 90,000 employees who work in New England, parts of New York and New Jersey, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
His tenure included leading the efforts to restore mail delivery after Irma and Maria, back-to-back hurricanes that struck the Caribbean in 2017.
Previously, Phelan served as delivery operations vice president, where he was instrumental in testing and developing same-day and Sunday package deliveries, as well as efforts to improve productivity and fleet management.
His other appointments included managing Albany and Connecticut Valley districts and serving as Postmaster in Syracuse, NY, where he and his family live and where he began his career in 1979 as a distribution clerk.