Chuck Bean & John Coe
Bio
Chuck Bean, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, is an executive and civic leader with more than 30 years of experience in nonprofits, philanthropy, and government. As executive director, he is responsible for COG’s overall administration and has guided high-level projects for the organization and region, including unified planning priorities for 2030 related to equity, transportation, housing, and climate. Chuck began his tenure in 2012. Chuck has a BA from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN and a MPP from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Public Policy.
Show Notes
- Role as Executive Director of MWCOG- 10 years there leading 125 people in staff in various aspects of planning. Primary liaison of 24 jurisdictions in the DC region. Designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (Transportation Planning Board). (5:45)
- Finding the “win-win” among jurisdictions (7:00)
- Collaborative work among the various jurisdictions in water and transportation (7:30)
Origins and Education
- Grew up in Minnesota (8:10)
- Father a doctor and Mother is a teacher (8:15)
- Father became 18 at end of WW2 and GI bill helped him through Medical School (8:50)
- Methodist Church influence- Iowa progressive influence (10:10)
- Public service opportunity- Traveled to Nicaragua at 17 yrs. old (11:15)
- Volunteer activity with native tribe there during the counter revolution there (12:30)
- Reunited with the people he met them three years later in Costa Rica (13:15)
- Appreciated his path in life (13:50)
- Macalester College– International college (14:00)
- 1970s it was known as a progressive college with “Reader’s Digest” founders as funding sources (14:45)
- Played football there (16:10)
- Political Science- Administrative Behavior (17:10)
- Anthropology interest- has influenced him more recently in his career (17:45)
- Leadership requires sociological and anthropological understanding in government work (18:20)
- Anthropology- Ethnographic interviewing- culture (21:15)
- Harvard Kennedy School (22:00)
- Master in Public Policy program (22:30)
- 150 in his class and 12 of them are still close friends (22:50)
- Went to El Salvador to write his master’s thesis (24:00)
- Client was United Nations
- First job- Guatemala (25:00)
- Co-invest Guatemala- I...
