Herocrats in Action: Amber McReynolds

In her 13 years at the Department of Elections for the City and County of Denver, including 7 as director, Amber McReynolds led an organizational transformation that resulted in dramatically improved voter turnout and lower costs. And in 2013 she was a key player in designing and passing a state law that has made Colorado a national model in elections. Her accomplishments are impressive, and she has a stack of national and international awards to prove it.

It would be easy to look at Amber’s list of achievements and write her off as some kind of superhuman Herocrat. And she certainly is. But after getting to know Amber, I also find her story to be relatable, and I think it contains lessons for anyone leading change from inside government. Here’s how she went from mid-level staffer in a dysfunctional environment to leading an award-winning department. 

Amber’s first interactions with the Elections Department – in the hiring process – were less than encouraging. In her first interview for the supervisory position for which she was hired, the man who would later become her boss asked her, “aren’t you a little young for this job?” (She was 26, with a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and several years of director-level experience.) A few days later, the then-director kept her waiting an hour and half for her second interview. Then, sitting at her disheveled desk, the director proceeded to apply lipstick and mascara while asking Amber questions.

Despite these red flags, Amber accepted the job offer out of her passion for elections and an adventurous spirit. Quickly she saw that her interview experiences were, indeed, indications of trouble in the organizational culture, which was plagued by in-fighting, lack of resources, outdated technology, negativity and resistance to change.

Amber spent the next two years learning, observing and taking notes about problems and potential solutions in a notebook. She wrote down everything, from the security protocol to the customer service interaction, to the data, to the metrics, to the inefficiencies with paper, to the number of forms they could eliminate if they streamlined processes. She also made small changes that were within her purview.  

Struggling with the culture, she made the case to attend a leadership training, highlighting how it would benefit the department and ultimately reflect well on the department’s leaders. They agreed, and the skills she gained helped her navigate the political environment. She also made connections with other employees throughout the city who were experiencing similar challenges, which bolstered her.

And then in the 2006 election there was a high-profile technology failure that led to a departmental shake-up. Several people were fired, including her supervisor (the one who had asked about her age in the interview). The debacle also led to a new governance model, including an elected clerk. During her first meeting with the clerk, she shared that she had been keeping a notebook of ideas for change for the past two years. The clerk was impressed.

With the support of the newly elected clerk and her credentials from the leadership training under her belt, Amber was promoted to an operational manager and then a few months later, to deputy director, where she served for over three years. A few years later, she became director. Over those ten plus years in leadership, she led not only innovations in election process and technology, but also internal culture change. Here are some lessons from her experience:

• Model what you want to see. Amber strived to use open communication and honesty with her staff. She encouraged her staff to do the same, inviting them to share both the good and the bad news. If she made a commitment, she worked hard to make sure she delivered on it. If she couldn’t deliver, she was transparent and authentic about why not.

• Create a flexible and professional work environment. Amber worked hard to institute flex schedules and a 4-day work week in the department. She also changed the performance evaluation process, making it an on-going, 12-month collaborative effort in which the employee and their manager work together on setting and monitoring goals (rather than an annual review).

• Prioritize learning. Amber worked hard to always be open to new ideas from her staff and community, and she told her staff that they always needed to be learning as well. She brought in the city’s Peak Academy to train the department’s employees in process improvement, which empowered them to identify and fix inefficiencies. She also encouraged staff to attend training that was relevant for their responsibilities or would bolster their skills. This included Election Center certifications, technical training such as GIS and data analytics, and other specialized training.

• Mentor and be mentored. Amber sought out opportunities to mentor interns, students and other young people she encountered. She saw this as part of the job, even though she did not always have strong mentorship from her own more-senior colleagues.

• Don’t treat everyone the same. Amber got to know her staff as individuals and tailored her approach according to their personality. She had the team do “Strengthsfinder,” which gave them a point of reference and shared language to collaborate with one another.

• Build trusting relationships with community members. With the newly elected clerk in 2007 and the new elections director, Amber helped to create an elections advisory committee comprised of community stakeholders from all walks of life and engaged it in the decision-making process. At first it was difficult for the department's staff to be vulnerable and open up its process to the committee. But over time they built strong relationships that helped to leverage big changes, such as the state election reform in 2013. Amber continued to expand this group and engage them in the operations of the department.

• Be customer-centric. Amber's motto is “election policy and administration must be about who votes, not who wins.” She engaged voters directly and the people who work with them at the counter to better understand what needs to changed and how. She also recognized that to be customer-centric, she had to build a positive environment to support employees, so that they can best serve the customers. She encouraged her team to make process changes and suggest improvements proactively.

Amber’s superpower is how she relates to people: building relationships with her team and empowering them to do awesome work, building relationships with community members, centering customers, providing vulnerable leadership and humane management. It’s her people orientation that drove the transformational change. As Amber reflected on the passage of Colorado’s voting reform law in 2013,

“It was really those relationships that I had built that set the stage for us to be able to work together to get something done that was literally, still today, one of the most comprehensive election forums in the country. It's made Colorado one of the top states to vote, one of the top states for turnout and engagement, and one of the most secure states to vote. All of those things we built over time, as a community that made a commitment to the voters and put voters first.”

Many of us are in a hurry to make change. Like Amber, we sometimes enter jobs and are struck by the brokenness of the system and the toxic workplace culture that enables it to persist. We want to fix it immediately. Amber saw that, pushed through it, worked her way up, and changed it over the course of 13 years. When she left in 2018 to be Executive Director of the National Vote at Home Institute, she had been at the Denver Elections Department a third of her lifetime! We can either be depressed at the slow rate of change or inspired that when we do the right things over a long period of time, change can happen. I choose to be inspired.

Herocrats in Action: Marcq Sung

Marcq Sung is the Director of Business Development for the City of Saint Paul. He shared his thoughts about what it means to be creative in his job, as well as what inspires and emboldens him.  

What do you do?

I work in business retention, expansion, and attraction space and am the conduit so that relationships get built quicker. The City’s resources are rather finite, but we know who might be more well-connected and then we can speak those connections to either remove barriers or have access to more opportunities.

You mentioned building relationships quicker. How does speed play into your job?

In government, speed is one thing that we are not good at. I've always looked at our roles as project managers or in economic development to be the lubricant to doing business in the City of Saint Paul. And most often what businesses face is this huge unknown of what the bureaucracy looks like or in certain times what the sector looks like. And we can say, "Here's some of the pitfalls that you want to try to avoid so you can get to your end goal much faster." And so we're like guardrails in bowling. It's like you can still do what you need to do, but we're just going to kind of keep you in your lane, and you're going to hit the pins faster than just going without any sort of guidance.

So you're providing speed, clarity and connections. Are you also trying to change the system in which you're working? Or are you working within the system to serve people the best that you can?

More than anything else, no matter what system you operate in, there are people who know how to operate within that system, because systems change takes a very long time. And I don't think an individual can do it. Like I don't believe in this Fountainhead-sort of person that rises above through his or her own genius and then just shapes the model of the future. That's romantic and foolish and Randian and I don't subscribe to that.

I think what you want to do is find other people who are interested in making change and connect with each other and then you can sort of figure it out how to get around the system or through the system or manipulate with the system to make it work for you because, let's not be too ideal and say that each step needs to be subscribed to in a different way.

What does creativity look like in your job?

Creativity in our job is knowing what all the barriers are and dancing around them. And we know the limitations of our tools better than most other folks. And so we help people navigate around those limitations. And at the same time, we share those limitations with those who can affect change and reiterate why they need to be changed so that we can do more good, better. And I think creativity is just like looking at our systems and saying, "Wow, that's just dumb. How do we just fix that or get around that?" And then we sort of kibbutz with each other and say, "Okay, I ran into that same issue. This is how I got around this. The bureaucratic process it is red tape. And so who has the sharpest scissors to get through it?

I mean there is a certain entrepreneurial element about the work that we do. For every “no” you encounter, you sort of persist and say, “well, how do you get around that? Like some people don't even ask bother to ask that question. It's like the seven whys. Keep asking why. Why is it that way?

What keeps you going? How do you stay in your creative problem-solving mode?

I think part of it is just working with great partners in the community. That is a blessing, and I don't think we would be as strong or as capable were it not for so many of the partners and the dedicated individuals in our community who do the work on a day-to-day basis. I think they get re-energized when they see people in government that say "yes" more than “no.” And then it re-emboldens them. And really they're the ones who execute the work and come up with the vision. And all we're trying to do is blunt the trauma of bureaucracy. Kudos to them. How can you not support that?

Does it take courage to practice the creativity you are describing?

I don't think there's much courage necessary in the work that we do. I tell new project managers that we’re placed in a unique opportunity where we have several supportive individuals in the work that we do. And because we're union, we can take calculated risk, not in an egregious or nefarious way. But in a way where we can try bold things that will help the people that we want to help – those who are marginalized and disaffected by the system. And there are measures to ensure that we don’t cause undue harm through corrective mechanisms.

But, I mean, let's use the luxury of being in these government positions to try bold, audacious things to advance and help the people that we work with. And we can connect with a bunch of people just by the sheer fact to say were with the City of Saint Paul, how can we collaborate and work together and find a solution set? And not to say that will succeed in every chance that we have, but, I don't think that's courageous at all. I think we're just afforded a lot of opportunity that it'd be silly to waste.

Herocrats in Action: Joy Marsh

“ We need people to save the babies who are drowning, but also people to fix it so that fewer babies are falling in the water.”

As Director of the Division of Race and Equity at the City of Minneapolis, Joy builds infrastructure to advance racial and transgender equity in the city’s policies, programs and practices. She and her team work with elected policy makers, staff, and residents to accomplish these objectives. She also oversees a federally funded grant program to address trauma related to systemic oppression in all its intersectional forms.

In our conversation, Joy reflects on the nature of her work and the personal qualities needed to be a system changer.   

What brings you to the work and keeps you there?

A lot of my motivation around the work is deeply personal, deeply tied to my own faith, and my own faith expression in the world, and what it means for me to live out my faith. I fundamentally believe that we are in a world where there are more than enough resources to go around, and to meet all of the needs of the people who are in the world, but that we also wrestle against systems that withhold resources from those who need it in order to benefit the few.

This is how I show up and model my commitment to that vision of abundance in the world. It means working to dismantle the systems of oppression that actively operate and recognizing that my own position is also intricately tied to that of the person next to me. I can't be my very best unless everyone is their very best.

I’m working to create a world that allows for everyone to be their best, so everyone has access to whatever it is that they need to live that life. I feel like that's part of why I'm here, part of the charge that I have as an individual in the world. So that's why I show up every day.

What does success look like? What would be different in Minneapolis?

I'm a very deeply systems person. I view community as more than just the residents that we serve, but also our staff and our elected leaders in the City of Minneapolis. So it's really important to be equipping those individuals with the tools that they need to think critically about the impacts of their decisions on Black, Indigenous, other POC, and Transgender people that we're serving. And I believe that if we're successful in this work, that the residents that we serve locally, and those that are connected to us both in the region and beyond, will benefit from this work.

I see success as seeing racial disparity trends being reversed. It’s also about marginalized communities having the ability to exercise greater agency to inform the ways in which governing systems are operating. So the decision making within City Hall is going to be more collaborative, and those who are most impacted by decisions are going to have a place in shaping those decisions.

What are you most proud of in your time at the City?

There's a lot that I'm excited about. I think ultimately the biggest point of pride that I have -- and I struggle with that word, pride -- is that when I started in this role in September 2015, I was the only person. There was no real vision in the city for this work, to include anybody other than me. And now, here we are, almost four years later, and not only do I have a team of people who are working in this work, but that structure has become normative inside of the city, and expected. And we even have other departments imagining what it would look like for them to also have dedicated staff to do the work.

That to me is a tremendous growth for the city to be in that place, and I believe that a lot of that is informed by the fact that we've been able to demonstrate the relevance and the importance of having staff. Just so few jurisdictions across the nations have a dedicated office with this amount of staff in it. That's exceptional.

What challenges do you face in this work?

Minneapolis shares the same sorts of challenges that any jurisdiction or organization faces when they're trying to be bold in advancing racial equity. There's always going to be intraction and people who are fearful of the change. There's going to be white fragility popping up. There are going to be individuals, even People of Color, who have internalized racism that they're dealing with, and all of those are going to create barriers to progress.

What I think is unique to Minneapolis, and can sometimes be problematic for us, is that we enjoy a significant reputation for being really progressive. I think that fundamentally, it's a well-earned reputation. But at the same time, it can lull people into a sense of complacency when it comes to being bold in our thinking. We have historically rested on that reputation and our belief that because our intentions are good we haven’t pushed as hard historically as we should to ensure our solutions actually reversed disparity trends. Since we are good people doing good work, the outcome is always good. This mindset is changing under our current administration that is pushing for metrics and outcomes tied to racial equity goals. This means thinking critically about race in the decision-making process and being willing to be held accountable, and hold ourselves accountable, to meet those goals.

It also means shifting the culture of the City so that staff who implement policies and execute the support processes do so with full awareness of how matters of bias can show up. It’s about deepening our language around anti-racist work entirely and creating the mechanisms by which we can all be successful in reaching the goals regardless of where we are situated in the enterprise.

Things don’t always land in the way that we want them to, despite all our good intentions. Applying tools like racial equity analysis have not historically been normative for the City. We don't have a good track record, necessarily, of doing that in any sort of enterprise fashion. Which isn’t to say that people don't think about race, or that people don't use racially disaggregated data. But getting us to the point that that's an enterprise value that we exercise all the time, that's the mindset shift. Through our strategic and racial equity planning process we are centering this type of analysis. Our administration is asking for it regularly from staff to support the decision-making process. That form of leadership is paving the way for the internal culture shift we need for long term systems change to happen.

What qualities does a public servant need to overcome these challenges?

Ultimately, I feel as though systems work is not the type of work for people who are looking for either immediate impact or seismic change. Systems work is slow and incremental, and there are lots of fits and starts, and lots of effort goes into moving the dial even the smallest possible amount. Systems change is for those who are committed to working for future generations. It's not going to be for me. I'm not going to eradicate racial inequity in the city of Minneapolis in my lifetime. I'm not going to eradicate transgender inequity in my lifetime.

That's just not possible, and it's not the expectation I should put on myself every single day. Nor is it the expectation that I should put on people that I'm working with. This change, while it's urgent, while the impact of not acting is literally life and death for so many people, it's also still going to be slow.

We have to continue to stick with it while also creating space for people to move at the pace in which they're going to move. I think it's really, really hard to be a systems-oriented person who's focused on future generations and still be able to live in a period of time where you literally see people dying in the streets. It doesn’t mean we don’t charge people with stretching or that we are complacent when fear stops movement, but it does mean we never lose sight that we are all on a journey. We have to find creative ways to come to a shared understanding and set of values upon which we can build a path forward. That takes time and the humility to know that we can’t get to the desired end state simply by moving everyone out of the way who you feel doesn’t believe what you believe. At our base, we are often more alike than we are different in what we value. When we start with those shared values, we can change the world.

We need to have people in our society who do both. We need people to save the babies who are drowning, but also people to fix it so that fewer babies are falling in the water. And attempting to do both is not sustainable. Trying to be the person who is saving babies from drowning -- within this government structure, which doesn't do direct service outside of the rare exception -- is going to be very, very frustrating. Because it's not a role, and there really isn't the space to do that in any long-term sustainable way. But if that's how you're oriented, this is a space for you to be super, super frustrated every single day.

It’s particularly difficult for people who are trying to dismantle these systems, while also experiencing daily the impact of inequitable systems. That's a very, very, very difficult place to stay in, and it can be overwhelming, and it can be traumatizing when you see people who look like you being impacted. So it’s important to have a pretty intense and deliberate practice around self-care. I don't know if this is a sustainable place for Black, Indigenous, or People of Color to really stay in for the long term.

You may have to cycle out. You may have to cycle out to a place of doing just something entirely different. Like walking dogs for a living, whatever it is. Or shifting to direct service, or something to feel like you're doing something that's more tangible for today. But ultimately, being aware of where you are in your season, and what work you can do, is important.

And be honest with yourself. Stop and pause and say, "Is this still the space for me?" Because again, these are not your problems independently to solve, and just because you step away from doing systems-based work doesn't mean that nothing else happens. It doesn't mean that somehow, you've given up. There are many expressions and approaches to how we dismantle systemic oppression and by stepping aside, you are also making room for someone else to step up and bring their perspective to the equation. We all have a responsibility, I feel, collectively, to address these issues, in whatever way we address them. But sometimes it’s my turn to be at bat, and sometimes it’s my time to sit on the bench. And that's really okay.

Last question: what’s your superpower?

I think my superpower is the fact that I’ve led large scale systems change work in a lot of different types of organizations – private, public and non-profit. I’ve managed projects that impact people across continents and those that only impact small departments. This experience allows me to understand a lot of different motivations people bring to challenges. It has also taught me immense patience and just how much I need to rely on other people to make any sort of meaningful change happen. I’m old enough and discerning enough to know what work is my work to get done and what isn’t. I’m past the point in my career where I’m swinging at windmills and I’m able to be more strategic in my approach. I’ve learned the importance of developing the leadership of others because I also know this fight continues on long after me.