Civic Responsibility

Since launching my website last year, I have used my blog The Sword in the Stone to share insights and experiences from my life that have shaped me as the person I am today. I started at the beginning sharing my upbringing as a child of adoption, I looked back on my experiences at Valley Forge Military Academy and my path towards my leadership position in our family company. I reflected on my 24 years of sobriety.

I’ve also used these blog posts to offer my perspective on topics and issues important to all of us. We all have a civic responsibility to make our society a better place, and while words are important, actions speak louder.

A civic-minded focus has afforded me great opportunities to make an impact, with a few key experiences coming to mind, the first being my multiyear tenure as president of Eagle Glen Civic Association. I chaired regular meetings for this community organization with dozens of engaged vocal residents that cared deeply about the goings-on in their neighborhood. I facilitated animated discussions regarding hot button issues with legislators and community police officers. As a civic president I was happy to volunteer my time to the support system for several hundred single-family homes in the area. Through this experience I began to fully appreciate how organized, collaborative effort can make real change in our community.

I also spent several years on the Goodwill Board of Directors, remaining heavily engaged with the mission of helping job candidates eliminate severe barriers to employment including: the physically and mentally disabled, ex-offenders, the housing insecure, skill deficient and long-term workplace displaced requiring soft-skill retraining.

For 25 years as a resident and family business of Delaware, myself and our team has been engaged with these civic issues and very mindful of the barriers to successful employment. We have over 1000 union part-time associates with a considerable number of our staff made up of diverse single parent households experiencing insufficient public transportation, sporadically available daycare, and intermittent extended family caregiver issues. We’ve faced major obstacles with the opioid epidemic and now the COVID-19 pandemic. All of these issues affect availability for scheduled work and contribute to overall job instability. My civic-minded experiences have made me and our organization double-down on our efforts to continue to be a leader in employing individuals struggling with these issues.

Through this experience I began to fully appreciate how organized, collaborative effort can make real change in our community.

Image

Through this experience I began to fully appreciate how organized, collaborative effort can make real change in our community.

Image

I also held a multiyear Governor appointed tenure as a member of Delaware’s Worker’s Compensation Oversight Panel where I vigorously participated in discussions with stakeholders including doctors, lawyers, government agencies and other participants in order to dramatically affect change, improving the system for individuals, providers and businesses alike. We took a critical look at national trends in effective state worker’s compensation systems and applied the knowledge we gained with great diligence and speed, achieving positive outcomes for all stakeholders. Affecting change for the betterment of all is what being civic-minded is all about.

Another civic component crucial to our collective success that I have dedicated energy towards is improving Delaware’s education system. I spent multiple years as a founding member on the William Penn Business Advisory Council advising the then Principal, now Superintendent Jeffery Menzer of the Colonial school district. The council consisted of fellow Delaware State Chamber of Commerce board members and other industry collaborators who met regularly to come up with a strategy to improve graduation rates.

It is all about finding the solutions that work and putting together an action-oriented path to success. We quickly garnered resources from multiple sources both public and private for the new program. We found a national vendor that provided holistic education services beyond the classroom and even beyond the school limits to include family intervention and afterschool activities with metrics that demonstrated material improvements in graduation rates. Improving educational outcomes means a better society and community for all, and we were able to attack the issue at all pressure points in a systemic way to achieve positive education improvements. I maintain this critical, systemic and analytical approach to all issues I face.

With my decades long involvement in civic issues affecting Delaware and a constantly growing, deep understanding of their viable solutions, the question became how to use that foundation of knowledge to help improve the state’s concerns that have risen to a critical level. That is what has led me to my next chapter: founding A Better Delaware, our pro-growth, pro-business advocacy group. For an in-depth look at what ABD is all about and why I launched this project aimed at benefiting all Delawareans, check back here at the Sword in the Stone for my next blog post on that topic. Until then, let us continue to earnestly engage with civic minds and passionate hearts to make Delaware a place where all families can happily live, work and play.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.