As director of the City of Houston Department of Housing and Community Development (HCDD), Rackleff was responsible for community development projects, affordable housing, and neighborhood revitalization. During his term as director, HCDD produced 7,800 multifamily housing units and helped 1,700 single-family homeowners with rebuilding hurricane-damaged homes. He also worked on the redevelopment of the historic downtown building now housing the J.W. Marriott Hotel.read more
Long joined the George W. Bush administration in 2001 as a hurricane program manager in FEMA for six states—but, significantly, not Louisiana, which bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina. One of his achievements was the distribution of an educational hurricane computer game for grade-schools. In 2008, Long became director of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, where he directed the state’s response to incidents as different as the H1N1 flu virus and the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.read more
“I am not going to shoot you, brother.” In what world do those words being said by a police officer result in that officer being fired? You don’t have to go down the rabbit hole in search of a place where up is down, left is right, and war is peace. All you need do is go to Weirton, West Virginia. Police Officer Stephen Mader was fired from his job for not killing a Black man when he could have. He’s now in a battle that seems both absurd and highlights the absurdity of our times.read more
An educator by profession, Gilchrist effected a major career change in 2009 by accepting an offer to become an education officer at the Ministry of Education, where she was responsible for the security and administration of all external examinations from January to October 2009. She was soon promoted to chief education officer at the Ministry of Education, where she supervised educational processes in schools from October 2009 to September 2016.read more
When Serbia and Montenegro split in 2006, in June Kaluđerović became Montenegro’s representative at the United Nations, running his country’s mission out of his son’s bedroom, and ambassador after that country became a member. While serving as UN ambassador, Kaluđerović was invited to speak at a New York meeting of the Nero Wolfe society, the Wolfe Pack, because the fictional detective created by Rex Stout was said to have been born in Montenegro.read more
