Dannette Smith named Human Services director
Mayor McGinn appoints three Cabinet members,
other staff changes

SEATTLE - Mayor Mike McGinn today named a new Human Services Director among several Cabinet-level appointments and other Mayor's Office staffing decisions.

McGinn appointed Dannette R. Smith, of Fairburn, Ga., as the new director of the Seattle Human Services Department. Smith currently is director of the Fulton County Department of Family and Children Services, part of the State of Georgia Department of Human Services and the state's largest human services agency.

The Seattle Human Services Department has an annual budget of $147.8 million and approximately 330 employees. The agency funds and operates programs to help people with low incomes, children, domestic-violence victims, seniors, immigrants and refugees and persons with disabilities.

Smith, who replaces Seattle's Acting Human Services Director Kip Tokuda, begins work July 12. In Georgia, she led a staff of 1,300 and managed an annual budget of $96 million.

Mayor McGinn also is forwarding legislation to the City Council to appoint Office of Economic Development Acting Director Stephen H. Johnson and Office of Sustainability and Environment Acting Director Jill Simmons as permanent directors of their respective offices.

Simmons has served as the Office of Sustainability and Environment (OSE) climate protection program manager, where she worked to implement the Seattle Climate Protection Initiative and oversee completion of the Seattle's greenhouse gas inventories. She currently manages the city's recent $20 million federal stimulus grant from the Department of Energy to retrofit homes and buildings in Seattle. OSE was created in 2000 to accelerate environmentally sustainable practices by city government and the community at large.

As acting director of the Office of Economic Development (OED), Johnson reorganized the office to be more responsive to the needs of Seattle's business community, including raising nearly $70 million in new funding sources to help micro-, small and large businesses access capital. He has led the city's workforce development strategy to increase the number of low-income, low-skilled Seattle residents who obtain post-secondary school credentials that help land better-paying jobs and career advancement.

McGinn also announced the addition of two new staffers in the Mayor's Office.

Timothy Killian will serve as senior advisor to the mayor, focusing on City Council relations. Killian has been active in local politics for more than a decade, managing two campaigns to legalize the medical use of marijuana in the late 1990s, managing Mark Sidran's attorney general race in 2004, and running Seattle Referendum 1 in 2006 to overturn city regulations on adult cabaret businesses. Killian is a member of the State Sentencing Guidelines Commission.

Lynda Petersen will serve as Seattle's Chief Service Officer, a position created through a grant awarded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Petersen will develop a service plan to coordinate efforts between the City of Seattle, the nonprofit sector and volunteer-based organizations to support the goals of McGinn's Youth and Families Initiative.

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Office of the Mayor