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Randy Engstrom (EMPA ’09) has served as the Director of the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture since 2012 and in that time he has felt the impact of a shift in Federal Government priorities that has put more pressure and emphasis on interventions from local government. He is still determined and inspired and to explore solutions in promoting racial equality, educational access, climate and income equality.

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

As the Director of the Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS) in the City of Seattle, I have been tasked with promoting the creative ecology of the city. In a climate where racial equality, educational access, climate, and income equality are at the forefront of issues in the public sector, I have led the ARTS through developments in public art programming, new programs and policies in arts education and racial equity through the arts.

The race and equity work promoted by ARTS led to great collaboration and innovation here across the city. ARTS shares and embeds staff positions within many departments to advance the department’s goals using arts as a vehicle. For example, the Office for Civil Rights has integrated arts and culture to advance racial justice and have used it to define and deploy changes, in addition to how they create artist’s stories. ARTS has also recently co-produced the Shape of Trust Program to advance racial justice. The goal of the project is to build a practice of racial equity within the workplace using experiential, arts-integrated learning for employees who supervise, manage and advise on human resources issues. To realize the project we commissioned a local theater artist to write a show based on feedback from the Citywide Race and Social Justice Initiative survey, using real stories about experiences with racial and sexual harassment. We then casted a team of actors and staged three readings, reaching over 1,200 City Staff. It was very powerful and very well received and a good example of arts-based strategies.

I am excited by ARTS’ increased focus on our creative economy and growing the creative industry in Seattle. The creative economy is the intersection between cultural development and economic development; investing in creative skills and understanding their role in the wider economy is more important now than ever.  With technological advances like automation and artificial intelligence gaining momentum and investment, it is equally important to invest in jobs that humans are uniquely qualified to do. Jobs that are not easily replaced by machines are those grounded in creativity, empathy, and storytelling. Our focus is on fields that center creativity, the human experience, and the creation and preservation of culture.

At the Evans School, I learned to emphasize strategy, frame my arguments, and communicate concisely. The Evans School taught me to think about organizational management by getting on the balcony, imagining the future, and mapping out a system with a plan.  To minimize room for interpretation, I learned to set up a framing narrative to add power to my proposals and improve their effectiveness in legislation or execution. I learned to communicate effectively, quickly, and briefly on incredibly detailed and intense issues.   

I feel an urgency to provide pathways for people to serve the public and the community. We need nurture and include everyone who wants to contribute. I personally hope to continue contributing to the city, and I hope people can hear – and answer- the call of public service.

Meet Gabriel Scheer, MPA 2004 – an Evans School alum who exemplifies how a public sector education can help a private sector company promote the public good!

Since graduating from the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, I have consistently utilized my public policy background to follow my passion for environmental sustainability. Most recently, this has been in my work at Lime, where I serve as the Senior Director of Data Policy & Strategic Partnerships. Equipped with a heart of public service (but perhaps with the patience of the private sector), I am driven to make a difference in the way people navigate cities.

It is my goal to help people see – and to help realize – the better world that is possible by dramatically reducing dependence on single occupancy cars. To do this effectively, I have experienced the critical need for the collaboration between the public sector and the private sector. By leading efforts to bring smart mobility (including: dock-less bike & scooter sharing and free-floating car sharing) to cities across North America and beyond, I work with officials at different levels of government to promote this cause.

The public sector has the unique and wonderful role of creating the most broadly beneficial frameworks for society to operate, while the private sector holds the ability to quickly leverage and mobilize massive amounts of funding to try new things. When paired together – transformative changes can be accomplished.

But that’s not to say that this type of partnership isn’t challenging. From redefining what a scooter is called in Salt Lake City to fit policy standards, to finding places to park our shared bikes in Seattle, I have worked with government officials to find optimal solutions to issues that arise. From our birth, Lime has been committed to working with government to minimize our negative impacts while taking best advantage of the positive impacts we can bring. I worked with councilmembers and mayors to showcase the promise and the potential of Lime’s vision, at a time when we did not have any concrete evidence on why this approach would be effective. Through close collaboration with government officials, we had the opportunity to prove our value – something that has seen us grow from no operations anywhere to providing service in more than 100 cities globally.

My work focuses on the big picture and how the private sector can collaborate with government to mitigate problems. And, my public-sector based education at the Evans School enabled me to represent a business with a more empathetic approach. I learned how to work with government first to improve lives of residents. Working at Lime, this opens all kinds of interesting questions: how should cities prioritize public space, such as sidewalks, to serve different needs? How do we integrate a previously-uncontemplated transportation option, at scale, into existing right of way? How can we best collaborate to educate the community as to appropriate, responsible usage of these new vehicles so as to minimize negative impacts – and how do we do so within a built environment that doesn’t typically change quickly? These are the type of questions I face in my position, and invariably the best approaches to answering them have been to collaborate, to respectfully push each other to imagine better ways of doing things. We are just the beginning.

We live in a time where dramatic change requires everyone work together. My public policy background has been great in helping me understand where people are coming from and the values and perspectives they hold. While at the Evans School, I relished the opportunity to collaborate with so many other students from across the UW – including the Law School, the Department of Engineering, and the Business School. That experience exemplified the collaboration necessary to do my job, and I apply the lessons I learned through that experience every single day in my work.

Evans School Alumni make the world better in invaluable ways. By bringing passion, rigor, and kindness to their work in the public sector, these optimists make a lasting impact on communities across the globe.

Every year we celebrate the remarkable accomplishments of Evans School Alumni with the Evans School Distinguished and Young Alumni Awards to recognize outstanding leaders in our communities.

We are so pleased to announce this year’s award recipients for their commitment to driving the public good!

Tom Uniack (MPA ’02), Distinguished Alumni Award

Tom graduated from the Evans School in 2002 and serves as the is the Executive Director of Washington Wild, a statewide nonprofit organization that works to permanently preserve and protect wild lands and rivers across Washington State. Equipped with the skillset he gained at Evans, Tom has led numerous campaigns that have resulted in permanent protection for wilderness areas and wild and scenic rivers in Washington State. He led the efforts that successfully resulted in the passage of the Wild Sky Wilderness Act of 2003 as well as the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Additions of 2014. A passionate conservationist and advocate, Tom works tirelessly to protect and preserve our environment for future generations. 

Erin Hatheway (MPA ’13), Young Alumni Award

Erin graduated from the Evans School in 2013 and is currently the Deputy Director of A Way Home Washington, an innovative public-private partnership to end youth and young adult homelessness in Washington State. Using data-informed, performance-based, and equity-driven practices – with a special focus on eliminating the disproportionate experience of homelessness among youth of color and those who identify as LGBTQ – A Way Home Washington has an ambitious plan for Washington to be the first state in the country to not just manage youth homelessness, but to prevent and to end it, once and for all. Centered on serving vulnerable youth and young adults, Erin encourages collaboration amongst all key stakeholders to find solution to eliminate youth and young adult homelessness. 

Anthony Shoecraft (MPA ’09), Young Alumni Award

Anthony graduated from the Evans School in 2009 and is currently serving the City of Seattle as Special Advisor to the Mayor on Black Male Achievement to make a positive difference in the lives of young black males. As a catalyst and an organizer, he has led critical efforts to establish and implement systems to offer better and more inclusive support to young black men to improve life outcomes and help them reach their full potential. Anthony continues to give back to both the Evans School community and the community at large.

These incredible recipients were honored at the 2019 Evans School Fellowship Dinner, and we are so proud of their work! Congratulations, Tom, Anthony and Erin! 

For his outstanding achievement in public service, Randy Engstrom (Executive MPA 2009) was honored with the 2019 NASPAA Alumni Award! This is the first time an Evans School alum has won this prestigious award. Congratulations, Randy!

As Director of the City of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS) for the past six years, Randy has been instrumental in promoting the creative ecology of the city. Serving under three different mayors, he has led ARTS through many innovative developments in public art programming, new programs and policies in arts education, and racial equity through the arts.

His long list of accolades include, but are not limited to leading: the opening of ARTS at King Street Station – a space that creates more opportunities for people of color to produce and present their work; ARTISTS UP, a program that serves marginalized and underrepresented artists in Washington State; and a robust grant program that invests in the local arts and cultural community.

Here at the Evans School, we are so proud of Randy’s commitment to serving the public good. The tremendous initiatives he has brought forth in the City of Seattle have made a true difference in the lives of Seattleites – and beyond.

See his NASPAA video here!