Ann Edwards, first woman CEO of Sacramento County, left with a mess from male predecessors
Ann Edwards is the first woman to be the CEO of Sacramento County. That’s significant for many reasons, not the least of which is how some toxic men who preceded her left Edwards an enormous mess for which she is now responsible.
Who could forget Edwards’ immediate predecessor, Nav Gill, who ignored county mask mandates as COVID-19 spiked last year? And who, according to women in the county who filed complaints against him, created a toxic workplace?
Homelessness has spun out of control in Sacramento County, and Gill and his predecessors didn’t come close to doing enough to match the scope of the problem as it proliferated.
COVID-19 numbers are surging again, and county health officials lost valuable time last year before their office was properly funded. The downtown jail is subject to costly lawsuits and is a blight on downtown Sacramento.
The culture within county government, the largest in the Sacramento region, was typified by Gill, who was revealed to have degrading pet names for people he didn’t like. To him, Supervisor Phil Serna was a “fake Mexican.” We could go on, but it’s significant that Edwards is not denying what she’s up against.
After serving in an interim role following Gill’s removal, Edwards this week was named as full-time CEO by the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors. Asked what her priorities are in the position, Edwards started with “culture.”
She said she’s heard from enough people that it’s “hard to do business” with the county to believe it’s true.
“In some areas, it is very challenging,” she said. “There is a culture of rigidity and fear.”
Edwards left the county nearly a decade ago because she was unhappy.
“I was a deputy CEO of the county and, for some reason, it was not a good fit,” she said. “I was not happy in that position.”
Edwards won’t say precisely why she left, but she did go on to be the director of Health and Social Services in Solano County. The 61-year-old mother and grandmother who grew up in Sacramento and felt a calling to help others — beginning her career in human assistance as a marriage and family therapist — was commuting an hour or more to Solano County.
That was the price of doing what she wanted outside of Sacramento.
“It would sometimes take me three hours to get home to Sacramento in the evenings,” she said. “I felt like I didn’t have a life.”
But, for Edwards, this was preferable to working in Sacramento County.
It’s important to remember that the first-ever appointed County CEO in Sacramento was Charles W. Deterding, Jr. in 1933. It’s been one guy after another in the nearly 90 years since. That chain wouldn’t have been broken, and Edwards would have never come back to Sacramento, if not for a family emergency that forced her return.
It wasn’t because Edwards was missing her old, dysfunctional place of work where she had been personally unhappy. It was because her mom, Leah Edwards, a former elementary school teacher in Sacramento, was suffering from Alzheimer’s. Edwards is the primary person in charge of her care.
“It was difficult that I was so far away,” Edwards said. “Sometimes I’m the only one who can calm my mom down.”
So Edwards called her old boss, former CEO Brad Hudson, to see if there were any jobs. He put her in charge of the Department of Human Assistance, and Edwards has been climbing the ladder ever since. Hudson left in 2015, under a cloud of closed-door meetings and criticism of an autocratic style of governance, according to detractors like Serna.
Next came Gill, enough said there. Through it all, Edwards was one of the adults in the room who wasn’t vying for the top spot in the county.
“Not in my wildest dreams,” she said.
Edwards grew up in Carmichael and attended Del Campo High School. She received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Sacramento State University.
Her late father, Robert Edwards, was a professor at Sacramento State for years. She was headed for that type of life, inspired by health care professionals who helped her own sister with her addiction to alcohol.
“That sparked my interest and passion,” Edwards said. Edwards began her career in the 1980s working with traumatized children.
Like so many successful people, she learned more from when she wasn’t successful.
“When you care about the children you are working with, and something traumatic happens, you cry all the way home,” Edwards said.
Edwards starting working in the county in the mid-1990s. Helping people was always enough, but now it’s her task to help a sick organization. Edwards has a quiet confidence, a sense of grace, and compassion for others that are refreshing for someone in her position. She is accessible, accountable, precisely the type of person needed for this job at this time. But she will need all that and more to do this job.
The county of Sacramento is responsible for the response to COVID; it’s also the lead agency on mental health and treating substance abuse, the major drivers of homelessness. Being the CEO is an enormous job that’s been done badly for years. Now it’s on Edwards to turn that around.
To start, she took my call — something Gill never did.
“I have a wonderful relationship with Olivia Kasirye,” said Edwards of Sacramento’s county health officer and one of the women who accused Gill of creating a toxic workplace.
Does Edwards’ humanity, her career of helping people, and her lack of ambition for the job she now has to signify positive change?
“The hardest part of this job is going to be managing expectations,” she said. “We have a lot of challenging issues but we’re going to focus on changing the culture of the county.”
This story was originally published August 30, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
