Since January, Young has been the city administrator of the nation’s capital, supervising some 35,000 employees and a budget of $12 billion. He spent each weather emergency talking to the city’s chancellor of schools as well as various agencies about government needs, then processing that information and offering recommendations to Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. Based on that recommendation, she’d opt to close the schools and government agencies or keep them open.
And he did it while figuring how the city works, who to know, and getting to know the players.
For the most part, he appears to have pulled it off. Bowser has been praised for her handling of the snow emergencies. One Washington Post blogger offered her praise for being open and honest about what the city could deliver. "For what it's worth, the government as a whole is as communicative as I've ever seen regarding all manner of snow treatment," the blogger, Clinton Yates, wrote.
That the city – which has long battled a reputation of being inconsistent in delivering city services to residents – is getting some credit is in part due to Young, a 38-year-old who has been working in municipal governments since he was fresh out of Dayton’s Meadowdale High School in 1994.
Since then, he’s worked in Dayton, Cincinnati, Greensboro, N.C. and Alexandria, Va. His newest job, however, may be his biggest challenge: He’s working for a major metropolitan area with extreme highs and lows in income, with Capitol Hill to contend with, and that’s a symbol of the nation to boot.
But if Young is intimidated, he’s not showing it. Instead, he’s confident that he can help the mayor in her quest to improve city services.
“You focus on execution,” he said. “It’s the basics.”
Things like making sure the city deals well with weather emergencies, offering good customer service, making sure the city picks up the trash when it says it will – these are the things, he said, that help renew trust in a municipal government.
“You focus on doing excellent work and delivering and making sure you do what you say you’ll do,” he said.
Other people choose their careers. In Young’s case, the career basically chose him.
Dayton roots
He was a high school senior at Meadowdale when he was summoned to the school’s guidance office. Two representatives of the University of Dayton were there. They wanted to know if he would be interested in interviewing for a full-ride scholarship to the University of Dayton.
Young had already applied and been accepted to the University of Cincinnati, Purdue and Case Western Reserve University. But the prospect of free college was too appealing to overlook. The scholarship came with a catch, however: The recipient would have to complete a four-year internship with the city of Dayton.
Young applied. William Gillispie, then working in the city manager’s office, was among those to interview him.
“He outperformed everyone else that was interviewing,” Gillispie said.
Gillispie had known Young because his own children had gone to Meadowdale. He’d sat with Young and his parents at sporting events. But he had no idea that the young man would become a mentee, someone whose professional development Gillispie still watches with pride and satisfaction.
He just knew that the kid had nailed his internship interview. Young got the scholarship and, eventually, an internship in the city manager’s office.
From intern to city manager
Gillispie was a hands-on boss, and Young the kind of intern who wanted more than just to get coffee and file things. At Gillispie’s urging, Young wore suits to the office. He fit in with the professionals working there full time.
When Gillispie had his performance review, he asked if Young could sit in, “so he could see if I got my butt whupped or accolades.” Later, when Gillispie did other employee evaluations, he asked if Young could watch those, too.
The young man, still in his early 20s, didn’t disappoint. When Gillispie was absent, the city manager would ask Young to fill in for his boss. He would.
When Young graduated from college, he looked at private sector jobs – applying to companies such as Proctor and Gamble. But he’d grown attached to working in the public sector. “Nothing appealed to me,” he said. “It just did not feel like somewhere I wanted to be and this did.”
Young was hired as an assistant to the city manager, then ultimately moved over to serve as deputy director of the city’s IT department. But when a handful of job openings came up in the Dayton City Manager’s office, Young was there to fill the void. He was “24 or 25,” he said. They made him acting assistant city manager.
Not long after that, former Dayton City Manager Valerie Lemmie, Young’s former boss and the new city manager of Cincinnati, gave him a call. She wanted him to serve as her assistant city manager.
Young was beginning what would be a meteoric rise that eventually led to him serving as assistant city manager and eventually city manager in Dayton, where he held the top job from 2006-09.
He went on to serve as assistant city manager in Cincinnati and city manager in Greensboro, N.C. and Alexandria, Va., doing everything from leading union contract negotiations to overseeing airports and convention centers to overseeing transit, public works and public safety.
“I think back now,” he said. “Would I hire a 25-year-old to come and do a major part of my organization?”
But Lemmie, now at the Kettering Foundation, said she was hiring someone with six years of experience.
“He was doing a level of work at the assistant city manager level,” she said. “It was an appropriate opportunity for him.”
Now he’s settling into the city administrator job in Washington, D.C. He’s looking for real estate, commuting from nearby Alexandria, Va., until he finds something. He’s learning the acronyms, the players and getting his bearings. Starting a new job “is like getting dropped in the middle of a conversation that’s already happening.”
But before he got started, he made a few calls. Among the first people he called? Gillispie and Lemmie.
“One of the things I always say to people I work with is, ‘always leave it better than you find it. And leave somebody behind who can pick up where you left off to do a better job than you did,’” Gillispie said. “And he really did it.”
“He is someone so very special to us,” said Lemmie.
Ask Young what he’s proudest of, though, and he goes back to his hometown.
Dayton was experiencing an uptick in violence that was concerning city leaders. Young, with other city leaders, got civic leaders together and raised money to create a model to help those at risk of experiencing gun violence. Most were young, primarily African-American teens.
“We started this program and started to get at least connections with people to get them on a different path in life,” he said. “When I think about something like that, all the administrative, bureaucratic stuff we do in government, I believe - I know - that program has saved people’s lives. I know it has.”
“I love this job,” he said of his current role. “I love this job. But there’s nothing more special than being manager of the place where I grew up and was born and raised.”
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