LYNN — Mayor-elect Jared Nicholson has put together a transition committee, consisting of 10 people, to help him find the right staff for his new administration.
When Nicholson was elected mayor, he put out a call for people who wanted to, or knew someone who wanted to get involved in the new administration, with more than 70 people expressing interest.
“The response has been amazing,” Nicholson said.
The transition team is an advisory group that has been working together to bounce ideas off of each other regarding the kind of skills they are looking for in staff for Nicholson’s administration.
“The work that the full committee is doing is to help us think of what skills we are looking for, how we might want to structure the office and help us try to identify potential candidates,” Nicholson said. “The other thing that we’re working on in the transition is around ideas for what we want to be setting for goals, how to translate the goals we talked about in the campaign into what we want our goals for governing to be, and aspects around the agenda and the administration team.”
The transition team has also spent time talking to other groups and organizations in the city, setting up meetings with city councilors, School Committee members and stakeholders, and planning for the inauguration on Jan. 3.
The team has met once already and is planning to meet two more times before the inauguration.
There is also a subgroup of transition committee members, who focus on creating and running the interview process with candidates.
This subcommittee is supporting Nicholson through reviewing the applications and preparing for interviews — which are already underway — for full-time, part-time and volunteer positions.
“Both the committee and subcommittee are purely in advisory capacity, but ultimately I’ll make the decisions,” Nicholson said.
There is a separate interviewing process for the available roles, but Nicholson said the goal for each process is to hear ideas and see what each candidate can bring to the table.
“It’s been really exciting to hear from a range of folks that want to help,” Nicholson said.
Transition committee and subcommittee member Magnolia Contreras said the committee has been working well together to ensure Nicholson’s office is staffed the right way.
“It’s quite heartening that all of us came around the table to help and work with Jared,” Contreras said.
Contreras, who is vice president of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an Economic Development & Industrial Corporation of Lynn (EDIC/Lynn) board member, said the team has been focusing on priority issues and is acting as a sounding board for Nicholson.
“What’s really important is that we’ve established principles in how to do work and principles that are focused on the community… The committee is in support of all of Jared’s principles,” Contreras said. “We’ve also been able to think creatively in ways that will help make the city more diverse and inclusive.”
There is not a fixed number of positions that need to be filled, since Nicholson said they may be interviewing someone who has the skills to fill multiple roles, so the committee is going to figure that out as the interview process continues.
“We have a core set of skills we are looking for in candidates,” Nicholson said. “We are looking for people with great communication skills, organizational skills, and people with great intrapersonal skills.”
The next few weeks will consist of finding the right people to slot into various roles.
“We want the mayor’s office to be a place where people are able to feel like they’re heard,” Nicholson said. “We want to be, as a team, an office that is really able to deliver results on the key issues that we care about.”
In addition to Contreras, members of the transition committee include Faustina Cuevas, the city’s diversity, equity, and inclusion officer; Charles Gaeta, executive director of Lynn Housing Authority & Neighborhood Development (LHAND); Frances Martinez, president and chief executive officer of the North Shore Latino Business Association; Bob Tucker, president of the Friends of Lynn & Nahant Beach and former president of the Lynn City Council; Katie Cohen, former executive director of the North Shore Labor Council; Drew Russo, the city’s personnel director; Gordon Hall, president and chief executive officer of The Hall Company, Inc.; Thavra Net, mental-health therapist and program director at Rainbow Adult Day Healthcare Center of Lynn; and Oren Wright, Lynn police officer and Lynn Public Schools security officer.
The subcommittee consists of Cuevas, Contreras, Russo, and Gaeta.
