1. State the elected office you are seeking.

I am running for re-election to the City Council, 3rd Ward.

2. Give us a background of your family, your education and your history in the area.

I finished my doctorate degree in 2014, and after a brief time in Chile, I came to Lexington to teach at Wentworth. Since then, I have dedicated much of my time helping to build Lexington’s community.

For six years I have been a volunteer for Harvesters Food Distribution Program, and for five years I helped to establish and grow a youth program at the Methodist Church that gave many local youth from outside the church a safe place to gather, build relationships, and to explore our country: we took service trips to the Navajo, New Orleans, and Puerto Rico. I am immensely proud of the program that we created.

3. State your reasons for running for this office.

After I stepped away from the youth program, I turned my energy to the City Council. I have a 3-yearold son whose hometown is now Lexington, and I want to make sure that in forty years he has a town to come back to, and a reason to be proud of it.

I want it to be a place he can call home. But that means we need some course correction: as it is, Lexington’s projected future is fewer people and fewer economic opportunities, and I want to be part of the team working to avoid that.

4. State your qualifications for this office.

I’m finishing my first term as Councilman. During those two years, I’ve been quietly busy working to improve the city’s efficiency and transparency. I led the effort to renew our city website: the new site has a federal domain with federal protection, a better alert system, better online pay features, new drone footage, and more information in one place than before.

I also led the effort to bring all of the city under one email system, one that provides all employees and elected officials with a range of new productivity tools, including video chat and online cloud storage. We are already seeing progress in better coordination between departments. I’ve been the de facto IT man for the city, helping keep our departments online and coordinated.

After the gas explosion, I coordinated the city’s relief efforts and liaised with the ministerial alliance. I’ve also been working to make building and permitting information open, clear, and easy to access to make sure our homes are built safely and securely. I also worked with Tourism to establish their new website and get them running online, and helped with some of their new features, including the interactive walking tour page.

5. What are your priorities and goals for the city?

My priorities for the next two years will continue the work I am doing now, and also to focus on new ideas for Lexington to encourage new families to consider our community as a possible new home. As part of that effort, I also want to turn my attention more towards our parks, to see what we might do to give them a little boost. If we can establish a concrete plan on how to get a little more attention this way, I believe we can start to change our future to look just a little bit brighter.