Starting April 1, Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones officially takes the helm of SEMCOG as our newest Chairperson. In this role, she will lead a group of locally elected leaders who serve in government and education, while also promoting regional values and successful initiatives.
In recognition of Women’s History Month, we will take a closer look at Council President Jones along with two of her fellow SEMCOG officers: Mandy Grewal, Pittsfield Township Supervisor, and Pauline Repp, Port Huron Mayor. Along with SEMCOG’s other four officers, this group of women will lead the organization as we begin:
- Recovering from the pandemic;
- Increasing shared prosperity in a resilient economy;
- Improving safety with a robust infrastructure;
- Showcase our region as a place where people can access natural, cultural, educational, and economic opportunities; and
- Develop and implement regional plans that will continue to define Southeast Michigan as a quality place to live, work, and do business.
About Council President Brenda Jones
Council President Jones has been active on SEMCOG’s Executive committee for several years. She served as Chairperson of the Legislative Policy Committee in 2016 and became an officer in 2018. She is passionate about education and jobs. She feels it is important to promote a variety of career opportunities, including skilled trades, from an early age so young people can make informed decisions about their options.
Prior to joining City Council, she was a union president and relished the opportunity to help people. She decided to run for Council and make a difference to the people and the city she has called home since 1967. As Council President, she encourages interest in public service by providing young people the opportunity to learn firsthand through internships. This career exposure provides valuable experience in areas such as social media, community outreach, policy, and administration as well as interviewing and work skills. They also get positive feedback, references, and a nurturing family environment in the Council President’s office. She feels that this exposure and time working with professionals is important to helping young people decide on their careers, so they don’t waste money doing something they later realize is not what they want to do.
Jones on women in leadership
For Jones, leadership is about “impact, influence, and inspiration,” and with that comes responsibility of not just saying something but doing something to make a difference. She feels that women bring particular skills to leadership, including having open minds, being able to handle pressure, multi-task, motivate, communicate, listen, make wise decisions, and collaborate.
She says women in leadership view work holistically – as part of their lives – not just as careers. She was selected by SEMCOG to attend the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government for Senior Executives in State and Local Government in 2019 and says that it helped her learn more about leadership and was an awesome experience. She identifies her biggest challenge as getting respect as an African-American woman, first for being too quiet and then being too open. She realized she needed to speak out to achieve the best results for Detroiters and the city. She counts her biggest successes as pulling the community together and writing laws to make a difference in peoples’ lives. We know she will be impacting, influencing, and inspiring us at SEMCOG as well as the region over the next year as SEMCOG Chairperson.
About Supervisor Mandy Grewal
Pittsfield Township Supervisor Mandy Grewal is making a difference in her community, county, and the region. When asked how she chose her career, she says, “It chose me.” Supervisor Grewal had trained as an economist but changed course in grad school when she realized that a cross-disciplinary program like planning offered the ability to influence the physical environment. With a PhD in Urban Planning from the University of Michigan, she has been able to transform her ideas into reality, both as an elected official and urban planner.
Grewal began her political career as a Washtenaw County commissioner in 2006 before running for and being elected to Pittsfield Township Supervisor in 2009. She has been active in SEMCOG for many years as a member of the SEMCOG Executive Committee and was Chair of the Finance and Budget Committee from 2014-2017.
While Grewal has been an elected official for more than fifteen years, her passion for planning can be seen in innovative approaches to creating both quality places and inclusive practices. She counts her biggest success as the relationships she has built and nurtured over the years, which include those with peers and colleagues but, most especially, Pittsfield Township residents. Working in partnership with all of them, she feels the township has set the regional standard on how to retrofit a suburban landscape to promote equity and sustainability.
Grewal on Women in Leadership
She sees leadership as “having a vision and working with all stakeholders to improve the community through an inclusive process, and then working unapologetically to achieve the best outcomes.” As a minority female in a position of leadership and as an immigrant, it was difficult for her to put herself “out there for public scrutiny with a foreign name, accent, etc.,” but she focused on finding ways to acculturate with the mainstream in order to ensure she developed the skills to be fully equipped to advocate for her community and region.
She feels that women leaders bring compassion and focus on improving communities for future generations. Her focus as a public servant is to: “Always work with and for all members of your community – the power always rests with the public, and those of us in “positions of power” bear the responsibility to discharge the public’s power in a transparent and equitable manner.” She advises young people considering a career in public service to take the time to travel, meet a lot of people, and find what they are passionate about.
About Mayor Pauline Repp
Pauline Repp, Mayor of the City of Port Huron in St. Clair County, is currently serving her sixth term as mayor. Like our other leaders, her career began outside the public sector. She began in advertising, then worked at the City of Port Huron for 25 years before running for elected office. She had worked in the City Manager’s office for six years and then served as City Clerk for 19 years before retiring. She decided to continue in service because she found it very rewarding and wanted to stay involved in the community.
Mayor Repp served on the SEMCOG Executive Committee for 11 years and was Chair of the Transportation Coordination Committee from 2016-2019 before becoming an officer in 2019. Repp’s experience of public sector government as Clerk and then Mayor have been invaluable to SEMCOG, and her knowledge of transportation issues has been an asset to development of our transportation plans.
Repp on Women in Leadership
Her style of leadership involves “listening to people, guiding them, and then coming to consensus – not telling them what to do.” She thinks that women leaders are more aware of issues affecting the community and develop many different perspectives, which allow them to lead. She says that one of the challenges in the early part of her career was the assumption that only men were capable of being leaders but this has changed as more women professionals have entered and made a mark in their careers. She is one of the women who helped make this change.
Repp tells young people beginning their career to be focused, work hard, and don’t let anything deter them. She encourages them to consider public sector careers if they want a truly rewarding career where they can see the impact on their community.
Although we are close to the end of Women’s History Month 2021, we know SEMCOG’s women officers will continue to make a difference to their communities and our region. We look forward to working with them and all our officers and committee members whose voluntary contributions of time, expertise, and leadership will help build a foundation to help our region recover more quickly from the pandemic and develop a more resilient future.
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