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5 <br /> was to think about who I could recommend for the role, as I seek to support others in their <br /> aspirations to serve. <br /> Upon reflection, however, my skills and experiences are highly applicable in their own right, as <br /> I'll discuss in the course of the subsequent questions and answers. I humbly seek to fulfill a <br /> promise made by submitting this application and offering myself for service. <br /> 2. What do you consider to be one of the most important characteristics of a county <br /> commissioner? What in your experience demonstrates your ability to be effective as a <br /> commissioner? What is your experience in shared governance or leadership? What steps <br /> do you take in making decisions? <br /> I believe a successful county commissioner needs to be thoughtful, dedicated, open for <br /> feedback and to have a vision for advancing our community. Above all, however, what we need <br /> now is a commissioner who has proven ability to find common ground across a broad range of <br /> stakeholders and to work collaboratively for results. <br /> In my most recent leadership role, I demonstrated effective collaboration -- always with a mind <br /> to identify progress we could make in tackling a problem. Working closely with my leadership <br /> team, I sought input from community leaders on what work we could and should do to build a <br /> more representative organization. We took that feedback, set our aspirational objectives and <br /> implemented a plan to measure and report back on our progress. While this work continues, I <br /> am proud that we not only increased representation but also engagement of young people, <br /> people of color and those who live outside our municipalities in the more rural parts of Orange <br /> County. <br /> In addition, I worked beyond traditional activities to build a stronger, more connected community <br /> as we faced the pandemic by focusing on our common needs as Orange County community <br /> members. In early 2020, 1 led our team in making a rapid, early transition to the online world. I <br /> engaged with our elected officials, community leaders, elections officials and volunteers across <br /> Orange County, to assist in disseminating information about how North Carolina and Orange <br /> County were addressing the crisis. We did this by hosting a series of online COVID <br /> Informational Town Halls with our elected officials and by sharing early information with voters <br /> on how they could safely exercise their franchise during COVID. <br /> As a corporate operations leader, my organization served other functions such as Sales and <br /> Customer Service. Our mission was change management as we enabled new technical <br /> capabilities so those functions could do their jobs better. At the same time, we needed to <br /> optimize our investments, implement performance measures, and assess those measures on an <br /> ongoing basis. We held ourselves accountable by regularly gauging customer satisfaction. For <br /> our work to succeed, we needed the buy-in of our stakeholders, and they did not always agree <br /> with each other. We used a shared governance model that included representation from all our <br />