Earlier this semester we caught up with 2020 MPA Fellow Maureen Goulet about what led her to the Department of Public Policy (DPP) and the Capitol Region Council of Governments (CRCOG). Below is her story of impact and public service.
I was quite unfocused as a young person, and came from a family of working people who were not supportive of college. When I graduated high school, I had enough money to commute to CCSU for one year, which is what I did. When I ran out of money, I quit school, got a job, got married, and was a mom at age 19. I was a stay at home mom for a year, realized that was not for me, and got a job at a newspaper in the Classified Advertising department. In 2002, I got a job as an Administrative Assistant at the Capitol Region Council of Governments, working in the area of Municipal Services, and this is where I heard the call to public service. I eventually was promoted to managing the Capitol Region Purchasing Council program, a program that put out bids for commonly used municipal commodities and services, and expanded the number of towns serviced from 27 to 111.
While at CRCOG, I decided to go back to school. I got an AA from Manchester Community College, a BA in Public Administration from Charter Oak State College – going to school full-time while working full-time – and with the encouragement of CRCOG’s Executive Director Lyle Wray, signed up for the MPA Fellows program. I currently work in the Transportation and Community Development Planning department and my primary project is Regional Brownfields Assessment and Remediation
I use the skills I learned in the Fellows program every day – I manage a federally grant funded program for municipalities that requires budgets for each project, community engagement is a required element for accountability, and the work I assist towns in performing leads to community and economic development.
The 2020 MPA Fellows cohort was one of the peak experiences of my life, so it’s difficult to pin down one particular DPP memory, but meeting astronaut Susan Helms in Theory and Management of Public Organizations was definitely a highlight!