We met Susan Forbes Dewey last
year when we first toured the Virginia Housing Development
Authority’s modern headquarters in Richmond.
Her name and face were already familiar, however, because she is a highly regarded veteran of state government. We discovered during our recent interview that she actually got her start in local government while still in high school. During summers she worked for her native city of Chesapeake where she lived all of her life before going off to college in Williamsburg.
Her name and face were already familiar, however, because she is a highly regarded veteran of state government. We discovered during our recent interview that she actually got her start in local government while still in high school. During summers she worked for her native city of Chesapeake where she lived all of her life before going off to college in Williamsburg.
We asked her what her motivation for
working in the public sector was. Perhaps it was a family tradition?
Her two brothers are also in the public sector. “I
didn’t intentionally look for a job after college [the
College of William and Mary], but wanted to get experience in
accounting for my CPA. I started at the [state] Department of
Treasury as an auditor to get my two years of
experience.”
She suggested the question should be
“why I stayed in government, not why I entered public
service. I was fortunate to have a lot of different
opportunities at Treasury. More important, I worked for and
with people who were great mentors and very
dedicated.”
We wanted to know why she left the state
government in 1999 to go with VHDA, an independent agency.
“While it was hard to leave Treasury, my decision to come
to VHDA was based in large part on its public mission, and the
chance to work directly with a variety of stakeholders to help people
with a basic need: quality, affordable housing.”
TACKLING TOUGH TASKS
Once aboard at VHDA she said her work and
that of those around her was cut out for them. She has been
credited with breathing life into a formerly top heaving
bureaucracy and bringing in new, innovative professionals to
look outside the box for answers.
“Back in 2001,” she said,
“we did a housing needs assessment along with the state
Department of Housing and Community Development.
“We went across the state and did
ten forums across the state. They were public, and anybody
could come out, so we could get the qualitative input on where
the needs existed across the state. We were starting to look
even at that time at the uniqueness around our state as opposed
to creating programs in Richmond that were supposed to meet the
diversity of all the needs in the state. You can’t
compare housing issues in Southwest Virginia with housing
issues in Northern Virginia. So, we started off with that, and
the Census data was becoming available so we included the
qualitative data and the quantitative data together. From that,
we had a strategic plan that we put together in 2002.
