Mayor Walsh creates Mayor's Office of Diversity
Today, Mayor Martin J. Walsh announced the creation of his Mayor’s Office of Diversity, dedicated to providing strategic leadership to Mayor Walsh’s diversity agenda. With this effort, Mayor Walsh will be appointing the City’s first-ever Chief Diversity Officer, Shaun Blugh, and Deputy Chief Diversity Officer, Freda Brasfield.
“Even before being sworn in as Mayor, I made some very ambitious and serious promises about increasing diversity across our workforce and ensuring that City government reflects the people we represent,” said Mayor Walsh. “I’m proud of the steps we’ve taken and the progress we’ve made, and I know that the addition of Shaun in this Chief Diversity Officer role will serve to strengthen and grow the foundation we’ve built.”
Shaun Blugh currently serves as the Director of Due Diligence for IMB Development Corporation. In this role, Blugh assists in the recruitment and vetting of minority candidates for employment in IMB’s portfolio companies. Blugh worked closely with large corporations looking to increase their diversity spend, and engaged the national landscape for small diverse businesses to facilitate procurement for state and city contracts. He previously served as a paralegal for Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, based in New York City. Blugh is a graduate of Georgetown University.
Since April 2011, Freda Brasfield has served as the Administration and Finance Manager for the Mayor’s Office. In this role, Brasfield worked closely with the Budget Office and Human Resources Department, serving as a liaison to oversee all personnel transactions within the Mayor’s Office, develop HR policies and procedures, and ensure compliance with the City’s residency policy. Brasfield previously served the City as Regional Neighborhood Coordinator for Mattapan within the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services, and as Construction Monitor for the City’s Residents Jobs Policy Office. Brasfield is an active member of the community, serving as the former Board Chair for the Blue Hills Boys and Girls Club, the current Treasurer for the Mattapan Patriots Pop Warner Football Team, and Chair of the Fundraising Committee for the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts Young Professional Network. She is a graduate of Northeastern University.
The Mayor’s Office of Diversity will lead Mayor Walsh’s diversity agenda, including the ongoing development and delivery of the City’s diversity goals and objectives in areas of hiring, leadership and career development, diversity training, strategic planning, recruitment and retention. The Mayor’s Office of Diversity will also be tasked with analyzing and improving the City’s procurement strategies, to support and increase opportunities for minority- and women-owned businesses to engage directly with the City of Boston. The Chief Diversity Officer and Deputy Chief Diversity Officer will perform outreach to community, academic, and business organizations in order to increase diversity of employee candidate pools, and assist in the development of hiring processes to ensure maximum opportunities for employment and career advancement for candidates from underrepresented demographic groups. To that end, the Office will be responsible for collecting, analyzing and reporting the City’s employee diversity data, working closely with the City’s Human Resources Department.
