The thing that really resonates for me about David is disparity reduction. He talks about it. He cares about it. It's not just pretend or uh some kind of a mirage. It's a real thing.

Under his leadership, Dave created the Career Pathways Program. It removed excessive educational requirements and partnered with local colleges to recruit and train the next generation of county employees. In just the first five years, Henipin County hired more than 1,200 Pathway graduates and interns.

As essentially the CEO of Henipin County for 12 years, you have had the opportunity to shape this organization's culture, priorities, and values. I made and I hope others made sort of our top favorites. Um mine are disparity reduction focus hugely impactful and I remember being here with county commissioners from across the nation and all of them just saying oh my gosh this is what we need to all be doing...

You know, all the people I know in the cities I serve, the schools, the park boards, they all know who you are because you've talked to them. You even sat next to them probably sometime at a lunchon or something and had a great conversation and you touched them so they remembered you and you touched a lot of lives, a lot of lives of not just those folks, but the people who work here, you know.

And the first thing I think we discussed about is the oper how to operationalize what disparity reduction looked like. And you took me seriously. You took my voice seriously, my lived experience seriously. You were all in because I knew it was something that you were passionate about and something that you cared about.