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Cover Profile 
You might not have recognized the name when Governor Tim Kaine appointed Sheryl D. Bailey, PhD to be the new Virginia Resources Authority Executive Director. If you are in local government and trying to finance projects, rest assured, you will meet her. And when you do, don’t expect the typical state government bureaucrat. Dr. Bailey came from academia first, then owned her own business, and then, perhaps most important to you, from local government. She then served a term as Deputy Secretary of Administration during the Warner Administration during one of the worst budget shortfalls in the Commonwealth’s fiscal history. Now how many key state decision makers do you know who have academic, practical, and hands on local and state government experience? Not many. Combine that experience with a keen intellect (she earned her PhD from Harvard in economics) not to mention business and common sense and what you have is a rare individual. She’s the fourth director of this independent state agency since its inception 22 years ago. NORFOLK NATIVE We met Dr. Sheryl D. Bailey in her downtown Richmond office on a dark and stormy day. Her office overlooks several city blocks in the state Capital, and from there one could watch the busy and sometimes messy business of keeping a city like Richmond running. Streets were being repaired, utility workers were busy at here and there, and the occasional car horn or fire truck siren broke the monotony of the gray day. We asked her how in the world a nice little girl from Norfolk grew up to be an economist and the head of the state’s premier low cost financing facilitator. She laughed and said, “Luckily, I didn’t think about that when I was a little girl. Well, you know, I had all the good background with the things I did like I had the piano, I had the violin, I had the ballet, I had swimming. We had all those extra curricular things to round us out as individuals, to keep us busy.”
She said her first love was academia, which was natural since many in her family were associated with or taught at colleges and universities. “My mother was vice president of administration at Norfolk State University,” she explained. “I literally grew up sleeping on the [Norfolk State’s] president’s conference room table.” She smiled as she remembered late night staff meetings at be at then NSU President Lyman Beecher Brook’s home being watched over carefully by Mrs. Brooks. “[Dr. Brooks] had women leaders in his office in all the top positions,” she said. “So therefore, child care was part of what you have [to deal with] with women [executives] so we grew up as president’s office kids. His wife was an elementary education teacher and loved children. So his residence … was child care central. When they were working late, we would be in the office, or across the street at Dr. Brook’s house. I remember one night, I guess they finished up about nine or so, and we said, ‘Oh, don’t you have some more work to do? We aren’t ready to go now!’” She smiled, “they looked at us as if we were crazy! It was because of the environment Mrs. Brooks and her daughters set. It was a very family feeling. I’m not even sure if it’s something that we even do in the 21st century any more at all. It was a very family focused, very Camelot kind of experience. It certainly had a lot to do with Dr. and Mrs. Brooks in terms of the environment they set there. It was kind of like an extended family so to speak and [the adults had] a very strong commitment to build the university. So that’s what I grew up with, a strong commitment to public service.” Her father was a quality assurance engineer at Norfolk Naval Air Station. “Dad had a really strong commitment to his role in protection of our liberties. He said, ‘We owe it to the pilots and their families.’ And that was one of the compelling things he did in terms of any kind of quality assurance.” Despite being a child of divorce she explained, “I had two sets of wonderful parents who loved me deeply. So I was very lucky in that regard.” She said with all the positive influence in her life early on, it’s easy to see where her drive to succeed in public service came from. “In retrospect, I see now that it was deep commitment to public service and the greater good. My stepmother and stepfather were both very committed. My stepfather was a college professor, chairman of the department at state schools, at Virginia State and at Norfolk State. And my stepmother was [she’s retired] a divisional supervisor in business education for Norfolk Public Schools. So she was always developing programs, writing grants, oh she’s a grant writer extra ordinaire. “I was surrounded by people very dedicated to building programs, and providing services, expanding options and services very much in the educational field‹either public schools, public universities, or to support our active duty military.
When other little girls might have asked their dads to help them with their math homework, “My dad taught me tolerance at the kitchen table. I guess I was seven or eight, so zero tolerance production was what he was talking about. The first time I ever heard about Dr. Deming and Total Quality Management was my dad at the kitchen table. He was a student of Deming ten years before anyone was talking about Deming in the popular business context. Later on as a young person, she said it made perfect sense. “I got smitten by the bug and I realized that it was much deeper than I even realized at the time. So being a competitive strategist in economics, I focused on what they called competitive strategy. My number one area was efficiency and productivity. I worked on an international project looking at the sources of manufacturing productivity.”
CALL OF THE WILD She felt safe and comfortable in academia, and would have stayed there the rest of her career. Then, however, she told her academic friends something dramatic happened. “I heard the call of the wild,” she laughed.
She explained that she’s got a lot of “S” in her Myers-Briggs.* “I’m just practical, hands on, applied, really enjoy being involved in things of consequence. I’m ENTJ/ESTJ, but I have so much “S” that when I went to Senior Executive Institute (conducted every year by the Cooper Center for Politics at the University of Virginia), Deborah Roberts said, “ENTJ, ESTJ‹which are you, because you are really close?’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m a Gemini, so I’m comfortable with the situation so leave it there.’ She said, “No, you’ve got to choose.” So, I said, ‘If you force me to choose, I’d be an ENTJ with a whole lot of “S” and my ES/ENTJ depends on the situation.’” * Kiersey and Bates in their book Please Understand Me; Character & Temperment Types, 1984, Prometheus Nemesis Book Company, describe “S&rdqou; types as realistic, down to earth, sensible, and practical. So, she heard the call of the wild, and it drew her to two gentlemen she describes as “visionaries and trailblazers” in the world of public administration, Jim Oliver and Bob O’Neill. More and more in her consulting work she felt drawn to government work. So, she became the very first financial planner in the city of Norfolk when Jim Oliver was city manager there. “I was brought in as part of strategic positioning. So I was very much a part of laying the groundwork for the strategic investment, not only just in the downtown corridor, but also community wide.
“I love the consequences of the work. I did work at the Federal Reserve, and I did try that during my academic career. It was a little bit removed for me. It felt like academe. So being able to be in touch with the people and the connection with that, the consequence of what you are doing‹that pulls at my practical side. You get to see the results.” She said the theory as well as the practical side of things in government intrigue her and keep her motivated. “How economic systems stay alive and stay breathing is very engaging for me. To me it brings it down to the real, practical level because there are people involved, and there are lives involved. These are not abstract models that we can show our mathematical gymnastics for or whatever. To me it’s real life, and keeping it real with real people, with real time, real consequences, and real outcomes. That to me is very engaging and very enticing … we’re trying to keep communities alive and healthy.”
COMMITMENT TO COLLABORATION Her experiences in Norfolk, then in Hampton taught her the valuable lesson about collaboration with the public and other partners to get projects done. It’s one thing that she and Governor Kaine have in common, and what may have convinced him to appoint her to her present post. She explained that they share similar passions, and deeply believe in the value and benefit of collaboration. Concrete outcomes without collaboration would not be possible. They also share a passion for performance management, she said, as well as the shared experience as local government officials. “One thing I learned from local government is that everything is connected to everything. Also, there is a consequence of results. It all adds up to community spirit, community feelings, community vibrance, and vitality, as well as the quality of life,” she said. “Something else I very much believe in is involvement. Things work best when you have people involved, like the community based strategic plan like we did in Hampton. We had 400 people involved, we had a healthy business section, we had four subgroups, and we had them all going. It seems messy to some folks, but the way to management that is to get it to come and converge. “I find the richness of what we produce, the accuracy of the targeting is so greatly enhanced when you have as broad an involvement and stakeholders involved [as possible]. I really do believe in that strongly.”
She pointed to the Peninsula Workforce Development Center as an example of successful collaboration, and one of her proudest accomplishments while working in local government. “This is a concrete building that has a lot of programs and is attracting federal government grants that would not have been possible without collaboration.” It included six local governments (Hampton, Newport News, James City County, York County, Williamsburg, Poquoson) and Thomas Nelson Community College, Norfolk State University, Virginia Employment Commission, and the Workforce Investment Board. “We worked on it for two solid years,” she said. “This was the first, and may be the only fully integrated workforce development center. Not only do they coexist on the first floor, which is Thomas Nelson, VEC, and the Workforce Investment Board, they have fully integrated and cross trained. Old Dominion has the whole second floor where they have distances learning and they have the advanced scientific programs. You can almost go downstairs for your first two degrees and go upstairs for your last two years!” She said plans are nice, but aren’t much use unless they are discussed and utilized, and working in local and state government has illuminated that for her as well. “What good is a plan if it sits on a shelf and we don’t understand it. We have human systems, so the more people are involved, the more there is buy in and understanding. Not only do you get richness, you get more accuracy in your targeting, you get more accuracy in your sequencing, and your phasing, you get the right sequence. Also, you get synergy. Synergy to me is a supernatural multiplier. You get that supernatural multiplier, and you get additional resources that you didn’t even know were connected, and people coming together. The more we engage people, the better it gets. I am a strong believer in that. Then, when you have everyone pulling together in the same direction, or when we hit bumps, we don’t fall apart because we say, ‘ Well, we have a mission that we all believe in, we know that we are going in the right direction. We’ll smooth this out. It makes the impossible, possible. I believe in the value of that. It leads to concrete outcomes. It’s not just warm and fuzzy.
“So long as we’re focused and we do have a commitment to actually doing something … it does make concrete outcomes possible that otherwise would not be possible.” With her strong convictions and impressive energy, the Virginia Resources Authority will no doubt achieve outcomes that were never before attempted. We salute Dr. Bailey and her board and staff, and wish them continued success on their journey toward achieving those new goals. |
What does the mayor of Norfolk have to say about Dr. Bailey? How about the Secretary of Commerce and Trade? Click here for quotes and accolades for Dr. Sheryl D. Bailey from these sources and many more notable figures in government and industry. Sheryl D. Bailey Bio in Brief Sidebar Feature What's Virginia Resources Authority? Sidebar Feature For more information: Visit Virginia Resources Authority on the web at VirginiaResources.org |
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