David Berns has one of the harder jobs in District government: Trying to keep people off the streets in a housing market that doesn't leave much room for the poor. As part of a Housing Complex Q&A series with Mayor Vince Gray's cabinet, I sat Berns down with family services administrator Fred Swan to ask [...]
Want to start a business? Harold Pettigrew's your man. Now 32, he was promoted from chief of staff to director of the Department of Small and Local Business Development last year, making him one of the younger agency heads in D.C. government (but quite accomplished nonetheless). As part of Housing Complex's series of sit-downs with new bosses, we [...]
Like many of Vince Gray’s appointments, Office of the Chief Technology Officer veteran Rob Mancini was made interim director when the last guy got dumped, and then given the job for real. Also typical of Gray hires: A deliberate, don’t-rush-into-anything style. Still, he’s presiding over one of the city’s most exciting developments in the form [...]
The Gray administration’s Department of Employment Services had a bit of a rough start, after the mayor had to fire his first pick for the top job. His second pick, Lisa Mallory, has fared substantially better. While the President tries to get a jobs bill passed, Mallory is pleading with employers to forget what negative [...]
Mayor Vince Gray's pick to head the Department of Housing and Community Development has been on the job for four weeks, and already had to deal with a massive Washington Post series critical of both his former and current employers. And he's moving in to a new apartment tomorrow! As has become Housing Complex habit, [...]
Next up for new agency director question time is the District Department of the Environment's Christophe Tulou, who's actually been in charge for nearly a year now, but was one of the few Fenty administration picks to survive into the Vince Gray era. Last week, we sat down at DDOE's NoMa offices to talk solar [...]
We're continuing our introductions of new agency directors today with Mayor Vince Gray's nominee for Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, Victor Hoskins. He's a charismatic guy who'll both laugh uproariously and cry in public–but this city will depend more on how well he can push slow-moving projects through the pipeline than how well [...]
Nicholas Majett, the newly-appointed director of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, is pretty much a D.C. government lifer: Before coming to DCRA in 2006 as deputy director for inspections and compliance, he spent 19 years in the Attorney General’s office, litigating cases on the District’s behalf. Last week, Majett sat down with Housing [...]
