@robynbarron

What makes Marin special to me is something I didn't fully appreciate until I did the BASSC Executive Development Program this year and got to talk with people from other counties about what they're doing. Marin is genuinely unique in having staff-led affinity groups and actually funding them, not just allowing them to exist. Pairing that with a mentorship program means people here aren't just doing their jobs, they're building community and investing in each other's growth. Hearing how rare that combination is elsewhere made me appreciate it here so much more.

I want Marin County to build a coordinated, countywide approach to equity in hiring, service delivery, engagement, and accountability: a policy standardizing how REAL and SOGIE data is collected, for both our workforce and clients, paired with a public dashboard so we can see not assume whether county government reflects and serves the community fairly (we do not currently collect workforce SOGIE data, and no dashboard exists that is visible); a countywide language access policy, since departments handle interpretation and translation inconsistently; engagement standards that share real power in decisions, not just gather input; a small cross-departmental team to coordinate this work and build staff capacity to practice it, not just train on it; and real evaluation of outcomes, not just activity. Equity work already happens quietly across departments but stays invisible, with no shared way to see or evaluate it. A shared structure means every department builds toward the same goal.

My big, bold vision: a Marin County government that looks like Marin where our workforce genuinely reflects the community we serve, and where every department can show, not just claim, that services reach everyone fairly. I want community engagement to mean real power-sharing, not just information-sharing, where residents, especially those historically left out of the process, help shape the decisions that affect them from the start. And I want equity to be built into how we work every day: our data, our hiring, our contracts, our outreach not a separate initiative, but simply how Marin County operates.