Appointments & Service
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An appointment isn't won. You're asked, you serve a term, and the work is mostly meetings, review, and the record. It is the least visible way to be useful, and among the most instructive.
An appointment isn't won. You're asked, you serve a term, and the work is mostly meetings, review, and the record. It is the least visible way to be useful, and among the most instructive.
Over the last six years I've been appointed by the Governor of Maryland to three state commissions, two of them confirmed with the advice and consent of the Senate, alongside national nonprofit board service.
I took them for the same reason I've spent thirty years on execution in the private sector: it is very difficult to understand why public programmes stall unless you have sat inside one while it was stalling.
The word suggests more ceremony than the work contains. In practice a commission is a standing group of people asked to advise a department, a Governor, or an Attorney General on a defined question — and to keep advising after the initial interest has moved elsewhere.
Maryland Consumer Protection Commission — advising the Office of the Attorney General on consumer protection policy and the direction of its programmes. Appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate; five years.
Maryland Economic Development Commission — one of twenty-five members advising on the state's economic development strategy, policy, and spending priorities. Appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate.
Maryland Governor's Commission on Service and Volunteerism — the statewide commission overseeing civic engagement and Maryland's AmeriCorps programmes, advising on policy direction and on the initiatives that expand service opportunities across the state. Appointed June 2025, and the most recent of the three.
Disaster Services Corporation (SVDP-USA) — board service for a national disaster recovery organisation working with communities after natural and man-made disasters. Long-horizon work: the attention leaves within weeks and the recovery takes years.
Capital Region Minority Supplier Development Council and USPAACC — connecting minority-owned businesses to corporate and federal procurement. At USPAACC I chaired the federal contracting committee, working on access to federal contracting for Asian American businesses.
Because it's the part of my working life that most resembles the subject of the novel, and because it corrects something the other pillars imply.
The private-sector work is about making organisations execute. Public institutions are not designed only to execute — they're designed to be legitimate, which means slow, reviewable, and answerable to people who did not choose to be involved. Sitting on a commission teaches you that the friction is frequently the point.
That is a genuinely uncomfortable thing to learn if you've spent your career removing friction. It is also most of what The Continuity System is about.