BOSTON — Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has appointed Ava Callender Concepcion, a member of the Boston Licensing Board and a former acting chair of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, to lead the city's licensing and consumer affairs office, the mayor's office said Tuesday.

Concepcion will become executive director of the Mayor's Office of Consumer Affairs and Licensing. She will also chair the Boston Licensing Board, which grants and regulates alcohol and food licenses for restaurants, nightclubs and other businesses, and the Boston Cannabis Board, which reviews cannabis applicants. She will also oversee entertainment licensing, outdoor public events and consumer affairs. She starts Nov. 4.

She succeeds Kathleen Joyce, who has led the office and the licensing board since 2018 and became the cannabis board's first chair in 2019. According to the mayor's office, Joyce's tenure included licensing reforms, wider neighborhood access to liquor licenses, and outdoor dining and emergency licensing programs for restaurants and bars during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Ava knows our neighborhoods inside and out, and understands that our work must center the people and businesses that anchor our communities," Wu said in a statement.

Then-Attorney General Maura Healey appointed Concepcion to the public safety seat on the state Cannabis Control Commission in 2021, and she later served as its acting chair. The mayor's office said the commission oversees a $7 billion industry with more than 640 licensees. On the city licensing board, she worked on Boston's expansion of neighborhood-restricted liquor licenses, the office said.

She previously was director of governmental affairs and external partnerships for the Suffolk County district attorney's office and counsel to the Senate chair of the Legislature's Joint Committee on the Judiciary. She also worked in the office of James E. Clyburn, the former U.S. House majority whip, and at the Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board, and ran for Boston City Council.

"Boston's licensing system shapes the fabric and direction of our neighborhoods," Concepcion said.

A graduate of Boston Latin Academy and New England Law, Concepcion was raised in Mattapan and still lives there.

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