Grace Martinez, president of the Government Finance Officers Association and director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in San Francisco, was one of eight people we filmed at GFOA’s annual conference in Chicago between June 28 and July 1. This is the final video in the series.  

Martinez expressed her excitement about the coming year as president of GFOA, mentioning its new membership model which provides unlimited free individual memberships for an entity’s staff under a single annual agency fee.

She focuses on the challenges she’s confronting in her role with the MTC in effectively staffing up. “It’s really hard to compete with the private industry,” she says, “Because you know things are not as speedy compared to (the private sector) and also governments don’t pay as much as companies in private industry.”

One approach she’s been taking has been to rehire retirees. “As soon as we’re allowed to rehire them, I pair them up with the younger folks, and that seems to work very well because the retirees are excited to transfer that institutional knowledge to the younger folks and the younger folks are like sponges that are really trying to absorb everything.”

See the brief video below.